Friday, May 21, 2004

Finding Your Folks

By JUDY FOWLER KILGORE
jkilgore@thecitizennews.

Last Sunday, at a meeting of the Old Campbell County Historical Society, I was informed that the second part of this series didn’t make it into the South Fulton Citizen Review, which is distributed in Union City, Fairburn and Palmetto. I apologize for the omission. It got lost in the shuffle of changing responsibilities.

However, the column always appears online each Friday at www.thecitizennews.com. If you miss your paper, you can read it there. If you don’t use a computer, this topic would not interest you anyway.

To recap last week’s column, I mentioned that there is a submission agreement you agree to when you submit your tree to Ancestry and Rootsweb (it is on each respective Web site) and that you had until today (May 21) to either delete or leave your tree on those sites or it would be referenced in Ancestry’s new paid service, One World Tree.

This will not affect those trees presently on Ancestry and Rootsweb as far as obtaining free access is concerned. You may still view, add to, delete and change those trees to your heart’s content, at absolutely no charge whatsoever.

The “preview period” for the One World Tree ends June 21. Before that time you may sign up for a special rate — $49.95 for 14 months if you do not presently have a subscription to Ancestry, or $39.95 for 14 months if you are “upgrading” your present service.

I subscribed, went in there and poked around a little. And, frankly, there isn’t much to the One World Tree right now. But, after today, more databases will be added. At about $3-$4 per month, it is a bargain to get in on the ground floor. If you don’t like it, just don’t renew your subscription when it comes up in August of 2005.

Now, what is it, what will it be, and, more importantly, what can it be?

Presently it is a search engine with only references to family trees which were uploaded as GEDCOMS to Ancestry, a little U.S. map that shows where people of that surname were in 1920, and a few more links which, at present, are not really that helpful. But, remember. This is just a “preview” or a “sample.” Mary-Kay Evans, public relations director for MyFamily.com, told me that one of the first databases that would be added was the 1930 census. More will come later, but she was not specific about which ones.

But ... what could it be? This thing could really be amazing. Mary-Kay did not want to be quoted on any of what I’m about to tell you about the future of the One World Tree, and these are my words, not hers. But, ideally, this is what I’d love to see.

Some of you may be aware that the folks at MyFamily.com own several Internet genealogy services. Ancestry.com is just one of them.

A few years ago, they purchased Rootsweb, which means they own all those wonderful GenWeb pages for every state in the nation and just about every county in those states. On those sites you will find wills, Bible records, pension applications, marriage records (whole books of them), land records, cemetery records, funeral home records, biographies, and many more resources gleaned from official sources.

MyFamily.com also purchased Genforum not long ago, so they own all those messages everyone has been posting there for the past six or seven years.

Their most recent acquisition is FamilyTreeMaker, which means MyFamily.com owns all those family tree CDs they have been burning for many years.

Now ... with all those resources and databases owned by the company which is starting this One World Tree, can you imagine the possibilities if they added all those databases into the search engine?

This is just one possibility: You put the name of your ancestor into One World Tree and, voila! (Remember, this is only hypothetical.)

Up your ancestor comes on the family trees, with census references, his will, his land purchases, family Bible records ... and on and on.

You put in another ancestor and you get all of the above, plus his Civil War record and the pension application of his widow.

You put in another, and up comes all of the above, plus his burial location, where you subsequently find most of his family.

The possibilities of this One World Tree are mind-boggling, if they intend to use all the resources they have access to. Gee-my-nettie! What an idea!

Of course, this is my dream ... nobody actually said this is what it’s going to be. And all this Internet searching should always be followed up with your finding the actual records for yourself. But this One World Tree sure could do a lot of the basics for you.

I hope you will think about it seriously before you delete your tree from Ancestry and Rootsweb. Those who don‘t subscribe to One World Tree will still have free access to your family information and they can still contact you if they like. Subscribers to One World Tree, for a fee, will just get a lot of bonuses.

One of my responses from the Rootsweb Help Desk put it this way: “You can do your research for yourself, or you can pay someone (One World Tree) to do it for you.”

I would add this: If you pay a researcher, there is nothing that precludes him or her from using information found on the Internet and “selling” it you.

I hope these columns have helped you make some decisions. As I said, I am definitely leaving my family tree information on Rootsweb and Ancestry. What you do is up to you.

I welcome your letters about genealogy and info on south metro Atlanta families. Send them to The Citizen, Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; e-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com. Any letters and/or e-mails I receive are subject to being used in the column.

Until next week, happy hunting!

(Judy regrets that time does not permit her to do personal research for others.)