ROOTSWEB REVIEW: Genealogical Data Cooperative News Vol. 1, No. 19, 21 October 1998; Circulation: 221,800+ Copyright (c) 1998 RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative Editors: Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG * * * * * CONTENTS: News and Notes from RootsWeb; RootsWeb & Pine Mountain Club or Where in Heck is Frazier Park?; Geek Speak; Connecting through RootsWeb; Letters to the Editors (Privacy); Mailing Lists; Web Sites; GenConnect; Publishing Your History on CD; Humor (Y2K Parable); Reprint Policy; Unsubscribe Instructions * * * * * NEWS AND NOTES FROM ROOTSWEB ROOTSWEB WELCOMES NEW STAFF MEMBERS. BETSY MILLS is the ARGenWeb State Coordinator, and a RootsWeb and USGenWeb old-timer. Betsy initially will be working with Dale Schneider on new account creation. JULIA JEAN SOLOMON joins us as a system administrator trainee and is now handling new member set-ups, identifying abandoned Web accounts, and building new servers. * * * WANT TO HELP BRING MORE GENEALOGICAL RESOURCES ONLINE? RootsWeb is entirely community-supported: your membership is crucial in enabling RootsWeb to continue to add more genealogical data, Web sites, and mailing lists. The degree of community support directly affects RootsWeb's ability to grow. For details about levels of RootsWeb membership and sponsorship, please visit: * * * ROOTSWEB HELPDESK. For answers to your questions about RootsWeb, visit the HelpDesk at: . * * * * * ROOTSWEB & PINE MOUNTAIN CLUB or WHERE IN HECK IS FRAZIER PARK? by Karen Isaacson and Brian Leverich Walt Scott commented in a recent letter to the editors: "When one sees Frazier Park as an address -- shake, rattle, and roll comes to mind and skiing some times of the year. . . I was surprised to find a 'World Class' genealogy site where you . . . reside." Walt knows that Frazier Park, California, is a small town about an hour north of Los Angeles near Interstate 5, but many of our readers might not. And actually, RootsWeb isn't in Frazier Park at all, it's in an outlying community (suburb would sound silly in this context) called Pine Mountain Club about 20 miles west, tucked into the mountains. But the post office thinks we're in Frazier Park, so that's our address. (To further confound things, the telephone company thinks we're in Lebec. Go figure.) So, what's RootsWeb doing in the mountains of Southern California, 20 miles west of a place most folk have never heard about? And what's Pine Mountain Club like, anyhow? The second question is easier, and partially answers the first. Sometimes a picture is worth 1,000 words (or so the old cliche goes). If you can, take a look at: The town is 5,000 feet (and more) above sea level. We have trees (a bit of a novelty in Southern California) and snow (ditto). For this homesick transplantee from Olympia, Washington (hi, Mom!, hi Dad!), with a tele-commutable job in the Los Angeles area, the trees and fresh air and the four seasons made Pine Mountain Club sound like a little bit of heaven. Up we came. Brian says this is boring. He's probably right. I feel happy just looking at the trees and birds and, well, just being here. But maybe you'd have to be here to appreciate that. (Some of you are.) So let's let Brian have the floor: "Karen left out all the satisfaction of the pioneering lifestyle, chasing bears out of the dumpsters, 'coons out of the dog food, coyotes out of the bird food (it's a long story), and mice out of everything. Roughing it with no Chinese restaurant within 60 miles. Four- wheel-driving it in and out as our only road slipped down the mountain or had the mountain fall on it. "And the joys of trying to keep a major Internet site running in this environment, which range from the sublime (sleeping-bagging it in a freezing-cold NOC to keep the generator fueled) to the ridiculous (having our data lines cross-wired into the only bakery within an hour's drive). At least you could get the only 56.6Kb donuts in the world right here at Pine Mountain Club." Anyhow, Brian and I aren't the only techno-refugees up here on the hill. An interesting place like this, not that far from Los Angeles, has brought together a number of kindred spirits, two of whom, Scott and Barbara Rosen, founded Frazier Mountain Internet Service (FMIS). RootsWeb's first access to the Internet was a server co-located in the FMIS Network Operations Center (NOC). As you might guess from some of the more recent messages in the RootsWeb Review, we now have servers in other NOCs, some as far away as the new one in Anaheim. They probably don't have to worry about bears in their garbage cans down there. * * * * * GEEK SPEAK. Thanks to Dale ("Doc") Schneider for transmitting the following item, which was written by and is published with the permission of Leigh Compton . * * * CGI SCRIPTS -- Web servers easily deliver prepared pages and graphics on demand, but with HTML documents, the server can only provide those documents which have been specifically prepared by the webmaster and placed on the server. Webmasters need a way to have HTML pages created dynamically, based upon input supplied by the user at the browser. That's the role of CGI scripts. CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface, which provides an environment for executing programs on the Web server to process the input data and create a Web page in response. CGI scripts can be written in just about any programming language, but the most popular are Perl, C, C++, and Java. Common tasks often handled by CGI scripts are bulletin boards, database searches, processing forms, displaying catalog contents, and even shopping carts. All webmasters at RootsWeb have access to the MailMerge and imagemap programs. The RootsWeb Surname List, GenConnect, Surname Helper, RootsWeb HelpDesk, and the Mailing List Archive Search Engine are all CGI-based Web applications. * * * * * CONNECTING THROUGH ROOTSWEB: Thanks for sharing your stories. * * * Through my involvement on the Chester County, Pennsylvania, Quaker, and Mahoning County, Ohio lists, and through queries to county Web pages, I've "met" seven cousins and many non-relatives who have been exceedingly helpful and generous with their own research. With their help I now have substantial information on three direct lines, one going clear back to the 1400s. The first cousin contacted me after my initial query about where I might find a copy of our family's history and genealogy which was compiled and published by my ggg-uncle in 1885. This cousin sent me some preliminary information and put me in contact with another cousin who had the book. That cousin sent me wonderful information about my maternal grandfather's line and gave me a publishing source to get a copy of the book. I ordered copies for several family members, and they were presented at a family reunion this summer, along with a 12-generation family tree I printed out from all the data I'd been able to gather. Just six months ago I had no information beyond my grandparents' generation. It was quite a revelation suddenly to learn of our very well-documented Quaker roots. I thank the many genealogists who did primary research and so carefully documented their work and published their findings, and those still at work, so generous in sharing their data. There is still a lot for me to do, but how much fun it is, this addictive research. When I was looking for the location of a church graveyard where many of my ancestors rest, several people put me in touch with people they knew near that town. I learned that the church roof had recently blown off in a storm and narrowly missed the headstones in the graveyard. One of the kind folks who contacted me was a high school teacher who had the summer off and lived near the graveyard. He even offered to drive my elderly family members from another county to the site. Talk about nice people! The most meaningful contact I've made through RootsWeb, besides that with my cousins, happened [recently] in response to a query for information about my mother who died when I was one. I received a response from a woman my own age who had grown up on the very street where my mother lived. This woman asked her mother if she remembered my family. She not only remembered them but had known my mother from childhood until her death. She was able to tell me through her remembrances a bit about what my mother was like as a person. What a precious gift to find someone who knew a deceased family member so well. Thanks for making these contacts possible. You've got a faithful subscriber in me. K. Kleeh * * * * * LETTERS TO THE EDITORS * * * I would like to thank the many people who wrote to me following my letter to RootsWeb. The majority of people who wrote concerning matters that offend their sensibilities, or those of their relatives, or where a genealogist had been particularly insensitive. Some gave information on bank fraud (actual or potential) using information such as mother's maiden name, which is a problem which affects everyone and not just the vulnerable members of society. There were a few cases where vulnerable people had been affected, including a case of impersonation where a fraudster claimed to be a distant cousin, which is a situation I had not thought of, and which needs to be considered in the light of the increasing numbers of elderly people living on their own. One particular problem area relates to unmarried mothers and adoption. There have been major changes in social attitudes in some societies over the years, and many younger people may be unaware that there are still women alive who were incarcerated in mental hospitals for most of their life because they were mad enough to become pregnant. There are many more women who were forced to give up their child because to keep it would have been socially unacceptable to their parents, and this loss may have clouded their own life (sometimes to the point of mental illness), either because of the fear of discovery, or because of grieving for the loss. I would agree that in many cases a reunion between the mother and her child can be helpful, but the initial contacts should be done with the aid of a suitable friend or councillor -- and not by public disclosure on the Web. The most helpful suggestion was that there should be a code of ethics for genealogists. Clearly there would be some difficulties in making people aware of it -- after all, how many beginners read the FAQ before posting to the Web -- but such a code might be better than having tight privacy laws which would be impossible to enforce. Chris Reynolds [Editors' Note: See for the "Board for Certification of Genealogists Code of Ethics and Conduct" and see for the "Association of Professional Genealogists Code of Ethics."] * * * It's somewhat disturbing to me that people would freak out because personal dates and places are included within genealogical data on the Internet. Certainly, if someone doesn't want their data cited at my site, I'll be happy to oblige -- but the bottom line is that birth, death and marriage dates are public information, in public records. Anyone who really wants to find them out can do so, often very easily. And the people who want to find them for any nefarious purpose would be unlikely to be searching genealogical sites; they would go directly to the source, which they would know to be available and reliable. John Knouse * * * * * MAILING LISTS: To subscribe or unsubscribe from any RootsWeb mailing list, send an e-mail message with only the word SUBSCRIBE (or UNSUBSCRIBE) in the subject and the body of the message to [name of list]-L-request@rootsweb.com (for mail mode) or to [name of list]-D-request@rootsweb.com (for digest mode). For example, if you have Armenian research interests, send your SUBSCRIBE message to: ARMENIA-L-request@rootsweb.com For an index to most user mailing lists hosted by RootsWeb, visit . NEW MAILING LIST REQUESTS. USGenWeb and WorldGenWeb hosts may have FREE locality mailing lists for the areas they host and for that purpose may ignore the "Sponsors-only" warning on the list request page. Please request new mailing lists at: NEW SURNAME MAILING LISTS AGEE CRONWOVEN DECAMP (includes D'Camp, Van Camp, Van Campen, etc.; descendants of Lewis, Michael, John and Jacob from Zweibrucken, Germany to Pennsylvania in the early 1700s) HALLMAN (especially Anthony Hallman of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania) KIDWELL KIPP (includes Kip) KORNEGAY-CHAT (other Kornegay discussion) LEWIN MABRY MAHON OVERALL PANNEBECKER RAMONAT REDWINE (Frederick REDWINE of Germany and U.S. descendants Lewis, Michael, John and Jacob) RIEGEL (includes Reagle) ROOK (includes Rooke and Rooks) ROSE ROSENBERGER (includes Rosenberg; descendants of Henry ROSENBERGER from Zweibrucken, Germany to Pennsylvania in the early 1700s) SPEARMAN THAXTON (includes Thackston) UTLEY WAGNON WINKLE (includes Winkel, but NOT Van Winkle) NEW REGIONAL MAILING LISTS ARMENIA Armenia -- Armenian genealogy SCOTLAND SCT-INVERNESS -- Inverness-shire SCT-KINCARDINE -- Kincardineshire, Scotland: U.S.A. FLGEN-BOARD -- FLGenWeb New Advisory Board INJAY -- Jay County, Indiana KSCRAWFO -- Crawford County, Kansas MOADAIR -- Adair County, Missouri MOPEMISC -- Pemiscot County, Missouri NCCHATHA -- Chatham County, North Carolina NCGUILFO -- Guilford County, North Carolina NCYADKIN -- Yadkin County, North Carolina NHBELKNA -- Belknap County, New Hampshire, aka "The Lakes Region" NJBERGEN -- Bergen County, New Jersey NMROOSEV -- Roosevelt County, New Mexico OHWAYNE -- Wayne County, Ohio TNLAKE -- Lake County, Tennessee VAHENRIC -- Henrico County, Virginia and the City of Richmond NEW MAILING LISTS (ETHNIC, SPECIAL INTEREST, MISCELLANEOUS) FHCNET -- Directors of family history centers and others closely associated with the operation of family history centers FreeBMD-News -- Announcements and newsletter (moderated) for the FreeBMD project for England and Wales. For information about the project, see MadeiraExiles -- Dr. Kalley's Portuguese Presbyterian exiles from Madeira>Trinidad>Illinois * * * * * NEW WEB ACCOUNT REQUESTS. To request a Web account please e-mail the information to: NEW WEB SITES: Some of these might not yet be accessible. If one that interests you isn't up yet, please check again in a few days or a week. (the ~[tilde] before the name is required) will work for most of the following. If not, you will find most of them at the USGenWeb Project or the WorldGenWeb Project . For example, to visit the Devon, England site, go to: AUSTRALIA ausvicca -- Victoria, Campaspe ENGLAND engdev -- Devon U.S.A. alunknow -- Unknown, Alabama flmadcgs -- Madison County Gen. Soc., Florida gaclinch -- Clinch County, Georgia galauren -- Laurens County, Georgia gamarion -- Marion County, Georgia iamontgo -- Montgomery County, Iowa ilrockis -- Rock Island County, Illinois meskowhe -- Skowhegan, Maine moomcsam -- Ozark Chapter SAM, Missouri okkingfi -- Kingfisher County, Oklahoma oktillma -- Tillman County, Oklahoma pacarbon -- Carbon County, Pennsylvania txcalhou -- Calhoun County, Texas txkinney -- Kinney County, Texas vanewpor -- Newport News, Virginia vtwindso -- Windsor County, Vermont WALES wlsagy -- Anglesey HOMEPAGES GAYLE'S Family History Page GEMMELL & WALKER Genealogies Donna SUAREZ Family Page * * * * * GENCONNECT. 122 boards were activated the week of 10/11-17. Archives 5 (in beta-testing) Australia 2 England 2 FamilyAssoc 10 Germany 5 USA CO 1 USA FL 6 USA GA 28 USA IL 13 USA IN 6 USA KY 6 USA MN 3 USA MO 2 USA NC 1 USA ND 1 USA NE 2 USA OK 4 USA PA 5 USA TN 1 USA TX 12 USA VA 4 USA WI 2 * * * * * PUBLISHING YOUR HISTORY ON CD by Brian Bonner Mavrogeorge At our BONNER reunion this year I was given the task of producing a family history for the year 2000 reunion. Of course once the "volunteer" had been chosen, each cousin had his or her own idea of what the history should contain. As they described their visions of our history, they mentioned the photos, videos, audio tapes, certificates, and other items they had hidden away and wanted to share. How could we create something that would encompass all of our "history"? It didn't seem the traditional printed history would do. The solution I proposed was to publish our history on a CD using the same type of technology used for Web sites. This approach will accommodate all the text we would need for a family history with the standard journal report and box charts. It lets us include photos of individuals, events, and places as well as audio tapes. Various cousins volunteered to scan in photos and images of Bible pages, graduation certificates, and mementos. The only software needed to view our family history will be an Internet browser -- Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer. Several commercial and shareware utilities can generate Web pages. You can even use Word for Windows to create text in the special format needed. The latter is a brute-force method, bound to inspire those with lots of time for typing and tweaking HTML code. While these products are good for creating Web pages, they are not really designed for genealogy Web sites. I chose to use the built-in ability of Ultimate Family Tree (UFT) to create a complete Web site, since it will automatically incorporate the genealogy data I have already entered. Usually you create a Web page, with graphics and images, in Ultimate Family Tree and then upload it to Palladium's free home page . You can, however, choose the option to create the pages for your own site and that is what the CD actually is. It is a representation on the CD of a Website which is read/viewed by the browser. When the cousins have scanned in all the images of people, places, events, and family mementos, in UFT I will link each of the images to the appropriate person, place, or event. Then when UFT creates the HTML code, it will automatically include those images for me. It will create the code in a series of files on my hard drive. We are also going to include a special "family gallery" with family images that cousins can view and copy into their own family history creations. Once UFT has created the Web site and the gallery is complete, I will copy the entire file structure onto a CD using a CD burner and the appropriate CD software (I will use Toast). The CDs can be easily replicated, and we intend to include a CD in each invitation to the "Bonner 2000" family reunion. The recipient will invoke her or his browser program, point it to the index.htm file on the CD and then explore our history. Not everything will make the final product. You can transform videos and films into QuickTime format and "play" them with an add-on for a browser. But the QuickTime files would be very large. (By the year 2000, DVD disks may be in wide use and be an option.) The conversion process also would take considerable time. I love my cousins dearly, but if I have to choose between four days of work converting a video tape to QuickTime or four days in the basement of a courthouse doing research, the courthouse will win. For another example of publishing a history on a CD, check out Ultimate Family Tree's Family Tutor series of genealogy multimedia tutorials. The techniques used for breaking content into sections, incorporating sound files, and displaying "moving" images in collages, are easily done in your own family history CD. * * * * * HUMOR. Our thanks to Amy Dean , who sent us this story 18 months ago (23 Apr 1997) with advice she'd received it from several sources, Bruce Anderson II among them. YEAR 2000 (Y2K) PARABLE submitted by Penny Pennington There was once a COBOL programmer in the mid to late 1900s. For the sake of this story, we'll call him Jack. After years of being taken for granted and treated as a technological dinosaur by all the UNIX programmers and Client/Server programmers and Web site developers, Jack was finally getting some respect. He'd become a private consultant specializing in Year 2000 conversion. He was working short-term assignments for prestigious companies, traveling all over the world on different assignments. He was working 70 and 80 and even 90 hour weeks, but it was worth it. Several years of this relentless, mind-numbing work had taken its toll on Jack. He had problems sleeping and began having anxiety dreams about the year 2000. It had reached a point where even the thought of the year 2000 made him nearly violent. He must have suffered some sort of breakdown, because all he could think about was how he could avoid the year 2000 and all that came with it. Jack decided to contact a company that specialized in cryogenics. He made a deal to have himself frozen until March 15, 2000. This was a very expensive process and totally automated. He was thrilled. The next thing he would know is he'd wake up in the year 2000; after the New Year celebrations and computer debacles; after the leap day. Nothing else to worry about except getting on with his life. He was put into his cryogenic receptacle, the technicians set the revive date, he was given injections to slow his heartbeat to a bare minimum, and that was that. The next thing that Jack saw was an enormous and very modern room filled with excited people. They were all shouting, "I can't believe it!" and "It's a miracle!" and "He's alive!" There were cameras (unlike any he'd ever seen) and equipment that looked like it came out of a science fiction movie. Someone who was obviously a spokesperson for the group stepped forward. Jack couldn't contain his enthusiasm. "It is over?" he asked. "Is 2000 already here? Are all the millennial parties and promotions and crises all over and done with?" The spokesman explained that there had been a problem with the programming of the timer on Jack's cryogenic receptacle, it hadn't been year 2000 compliant. It was actually 8,000 years later, not the year 2000. But the spokesman told Jack that he shouldn't get excited; someone important wanted to speak to him. Suddenly, a wall-sized projection screen displayed the image of a man who looked very much like Bill Gates. This man was Prime Minister of Earth. He told Jack not to be upset. That this was a wonderful time to be alive. That there was world peace and no more starvation. That the space program had been reinstated and there were colonies on the moon and on Mars. That technology had advanced to such a degree that everyone had virtual reality interfaces which allowed them to contact anyone else on the planet, or to watch any entertainment, or to hear any music recorded anywhere. "That sounds terrific," said Jack. "But, I'm curious. Why is everybody so interested in me?" "Well," said the Prime Minister, "The year 10,000 is just around the corner, and it says in your files that you know COBOL." * * * * * PERMISSION TO REPRINT articles from ROOTSWEB REVIEW is granted unless specifically stated otherwise, PROVIDED (1) The reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes. (2) This notice must appear at the end of the article: Written by Previously published by RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative, RootsWeb Review, Vol. 1, No. 19, Wed, 21 Oct. 1998. You may visit RootsWeb's main Web page at . * * * * * ROOTSWEB REVIEW is e-mailed on Wednesdays to all RootsWeb Members, subscribers to RootsWeb-hosted mailing lists, submitters to the RootsWeb Surname List (RSL), and other RootsWeb users. DOWNLOAD BACK ISSUES FROM . UNSUBSCRIBE INSTRUCTIONS: If you would prefer not to receive future issues of RootsWeb Review, please e-mail: RootsWeb-Review-L-request@rootsweb.com and put ONLY the word "unsubscribe" (omit the quotation marks) in the subject line and in the body of the message. THE EDITORS OF ROOTSWEB REVIEW, THE STAFF OF ROOTSWEB GENEALOGICAL DATA COOPERATIVE, AND THE HELPDESK VOLUNTEERS ARE UNABLE TO RESPOND TO REQUESTS FOR GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH HELP.