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- This
column by John Cosway is a mix of 50 years of media memories
and 15 years of buying and selling experiences via live and online
auctions, flea markets, antique stores and markets etc.
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- Cosway's Corner -
Family tree research Part 2 of 2
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- Family tree research grows your roots:
Part 2
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- By John Cosway
- Last summer, Sun Media columnist Mike Strobel wrote
about a Toronto man who hadn't seen his mother since he was six
in Hungary 25 years ago.
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- Mark Sardar, whisked out of Hungary by his father
in 1983, didn't know where his mother was or if she was still
alive, but at 31 he wanted to know.
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- Budapest's national radio station - MR-1 - saw Strobel's
story online and aired the details. The mother's nephew in Budapest
heard the appeal on his car radio and called the mother, Zsuzsanna
Toth.
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- Viola. The long lost son quickly flew off to Budapest for
a tearful mother and son reunion. Without the Internet, chances
are Mark might never have found his mother and his family tree
roots.
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- The Internet has matured considerably since the 1990s, as
a venue for reuniting relatives via e-mail and web sites to fill
the countless gaps in family tree research projects.
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- So Internet results can be priceless.
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- Not all family tree research web sites are free. Some charge
fees for searches and other services and there are no guarantees
paid searches will be productive.
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- But there are ample, well-organized free sites managed by
selfless fellow researchers, all designed to get novices on their
way and keeping them busy at the keyboards.
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- Free is always good, especially for beginners settling in
after making a New Year's resolution to tackle their family trees.
Vets say be organized, proceed at your own pace and begin with
what you know.
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- The Internet will be there when need it and is expanding
as we type this story. But for starters, two of the most mentioned
free genealogy sites on the Internet are:
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 FamilySearch.org
www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp
- This popular non-profit service is the much-heralded international
site sponsored by the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints. The generous free access to worldwide genealogical data
in the comfort of your home can be invaluable.
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- "We encourage all people to find their ancestors and
preserve their family histories," says the introduction.
"To help in this great pursuit, the church has been actively
gathering and preserving genealogical records worldwide for over
100 years."
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- If you find FamilySearch.org beneficial in your research,
consider a donation.
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- Cyndi's List
- http://www.cyndislist.com/
- On March 4, 1996, Cyndi Howells launched her first
personal web site. It was a single page with links to 1,025 family
tree research sites. A "monster" was born, says the
American mom, and 12 years later her site has more than 250,000
links.
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- The site has become a full-time obsession for Cyndi, who
has spread her wings to include speaking engagements and book
writing. She has been called a family history hero, a selfless
Internet darling who shows no signs of slowing the pace.
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- Cyndi said in an interview for her site she does it because
"I believe genealogy should be a sharing and cooperative
hobby. If we all work together voluntarily we can make the Internet
a very easy community to exchange our personal research information
in."
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- Cemetery searches across Canada are becoming easier thanks
to a Herculean effort by Gravemarkers.ca - http://gravemarkers.ca/
- to compile photographs of every tombstone and marker in the
country.
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- The project is in its infancy, with people with digital cameras
volunteering to take photographs of tombstones and markers in
their communities. Ontario submissions can be found at www.gravemarkers.ca/ontario/index.htm
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- Ontario Cemetery Finding Aid - www.islandnet.com/ocfa/homepage.html
- a mix of free and paid services, can get also you started in
finding the graves of Ontario ancestors.
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- For other recommended sites, we turned to dedicated family
tree researchers we know for their Internet favourites, including
my brother, William Cosway, who has four.
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- FindMyPast.com - www.findmypast.com/home.jsp
is a paid United Kingdom site William recommends for people exploring
U.K. roots.
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- "It has a migration search for passengers leaving the
U.K. from 1890 to 1960," he says. "Found all of our
Cosways who came to Canada, my wife's parents, a good friend's
arrival and others."
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- Three free web sites he recommends are: Rootsweb's freebmd
(births, marriages, deaths) site - http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/;
the previously mentioned FamilySearch.org site - www.familysearch.org,;
and Ontario Locator - www.geneofun.on.ca/ontariolocator/
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- "Ontario Locator is a great site for searching for places
in Ontario, i.e. towns, cities, townships, counties etc., "
says William.
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- Glen Johnson, a family tree researcher in Halifax,
says the Latter-Day Saints site previously mentioned has
been the most important site in his research.
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- "They are the repository of most microfilms of family
tree related information," says Glen. "It is their
intention to scan every film and make them available on the web."
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- Automated Genealogy - www.automatedgenealogy.com/
- is another volunteer organization and is indexing
Canadian census records, says Glen.
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- "You will find 1901, 1906 and 1911 censuses there. The
1851 census is being indexed. All of these indexes have links
to the actual records."
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- One paid service Glen subscribes to is Ancestry.ca
- www.ancestry.ca/ - which
he finds cheaper per year than any two-day trip to the Ontario
Archives in Toronto or the National Library in Ottawa.
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- "Their indexes are superb because you can search on
anything at all. If you have a relatively rare given name, you
can use it to search for the person of interest."
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- But Glen says the quality of the transcribed ancestry.ca
indexes can be inferior, so it is "essential" to look
at original entries when available.
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- Glen also recommends the previously mentioned freebmd
- http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/
- for British birth, marriage and death records.
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- "The site, run by volunteers, has been most valuable.
They have generated an index to the births from 1837 to 1949
(with good coverage to about 1923). Deaths are 1837 to 1949,
with fair coverage to 1930, and marriages are covered well from
1837 to 1929.
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- "There are now over 200 million entries transcribed.
After finding a potential ancestor, you have to order the certificate,
which costs about seven pounds.
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- Hopefully, this two-part Wayback Times family tree research
story about getting started on the Internet will be useful.
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- Start digging and the best of success during your hunt.
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- Photo 1 - Cyndi Howells, creator of online Cyndi's
List web site, authoured a book on online family tree research
Photo 2 - FamilySearch in Utah maintains the world's largest
repository of genealogical resources
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