The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Computers provide valuable information with amazing speed
This story was published May 10, 1998
I remember genealogy before computers, before the Internet. Those definitely were not the good old days for genealogists.
Computers would be worth their cost if they did but one thing -provide the ease they do of recording data and spewing it out on various genealogical forms.
In my prime, I was a 100-word-per-minute typist. That alone was a tremendous advantage over hand-copying genealogical data, especially considering my marginally legible scrawl.
But that's only the beginning of what computers offer genealogists.
Computers allow genealogists to share data with very little effort. In seconds, a computer can copy thousands of names and associated data into a database or export it to share with someone else.
No hand copying. No typing. No trips to the copy center. Just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks and, Voila!
Connect your computer to the World Wide Web via the Internet and the whole world becomes your research library. This requires only a modem, a telephone line, software associated with the Internet and a little adventure and frustration in learning.
The World Wide Web offers literally tens of thousands of sites that deal with genealogy. Some offer little value. Others are major research resources.
Incline's Ancestral Quest site at http://www.ancquest.com is one of the latter. It also is one of a growing number of sites that require membership to use search tools, but many of its features are free.
I cruised onto it the other day and was seduced by the prospect of searching 16 million names in its surname index and searching 54.4 million records in the U.S. Social Security Death Index, updated to March 1997.
These search services require membership, which costs $15 a month or $100 a year. You can register instantly on-line if you don't mind sending them your bank card number. I didn't mind, so very shortly I was pursuing my elusive second great grandfather, Virginia-born John Day.
We believe he was born between 1790 and 1810. In a blink of an eye, my search turned up six people who might be my John Day, along with the name, street address and e-mail address of the people who submitted their data.
I'd like to report I discovered information that will help me identify John, but it turned out I've already sniffed over the trail of all six of these Johns several times. However, it's always helpful to contact another Day researcher, so I e-mailed the submitters. We'll see whether that turns out to be useful. Maybe I can be of help to them.
The Social Security Death Index will tell you the birth and death dates of deceased Americans who were registered with Social Security.
As a test I put in my stepdad's name. In seconds I had his Social Security number, birth date and death date, along with the information that his last residence was in Connell. This despite the fact I didn't narrow the search by giving the "search engine" his birth date.
Of course this is a lot easier done with a name like Chester Vinnedge than John Smith, or even John Day. But that's one of the hard facts of life in genealogy. It is a cruel world for the Smiths, Johnsons, Browns and Joneses.
Day isn't bad, unless you're looking for a John Day who was born in Virginia between 1790 and 1810 and moved to Morgan County, Ky., as a young man. His identity has eluded Day genealogists for more than half a century.
Well, Ancestral Quest's site on the World Wide Web is worth a visit. Check it out for free. Risk $15 on a month's subscription. Also, another good site is Kindred Konnections, at http:// www.kindredkonnections.com/.
If you have pioneer Mormon ancestry, you will be especially interested in Wednesday's program at the Tri-City Genealogical Society. Milt Rasmussen, Kennewick, will speak on "Traveling the Mormon Trail." The meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Harry Kramer Senior Center in Richland.