ROOTSWEB REVIEW: RootsWeb's Genealogy News Vol. 4, No. 11, 14 March 2001, Circulation: 785,441+ (c) 1998-2001 RootsWeb.com, Inc. http://www.rootsweb.com/ ROOTSWEB REVIEW and MISSING LINKS are free, weekly e-zines Editors: Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG RWR-Editors@rootsweb.com Advertising: sbrenay@myfamilyinc.com RootsWeb HelpDesk: http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/ Data Submission Form: http://userdb.rootsweb.com/submit.html New Databases (check often): http://searches.rootsweb.com/ IN THIS ISSUE o News and Notes from RootsWeb (Searchable Databases at RootsWeb; Who Has the Data?; Barking up the Wrong Tree; Postcards from RootsWeb; Shaking Your Family Tree; RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing Family Trees) o Connecting through RootsWeb ("Rose of Tralee") o New Genealogy Mailing Lists o New Genealogy Web Pages o GenConnect o USGenWeb Archives o Letters to the Editors o Humor o Reprint Policy; Back Issues; How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe RootsWeb's WORLDCONNECT contains more than 60.2 million names and new GEDCOMs are added daily. Search WorldConnect and upload your own GEDCOM(s) to http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/ NEWS AND NOTES FROM ROOTSWEB SEARCHABLE DATABASES AT ROOTSWEB. RootsWeb thanks all of the individuals and groups who contribute their data to share with the genealogical community. See the full list of contributors at http://userdb.rootsweb.com/contributors.html PASSENGER LISTS. Barque "Charlotte Harrison," Scotland to New York, July 1850; 1,500 total records for all ship lists (per html table) submitted by Harold A. Ralston http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. British Barque "Tay," Scotland to New York, August 1840; Harold A. Ralston http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. British Barque "Gleaner," Scotland to New York, 1842; Harold A. Ralston http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. Brigantine "Caroline," Ireland to Boston, May 1851 111 records; Kathy Amoroso, Maine Historical Society http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. Brigantine "Czar," Scotland to New York, 1841 Harold A. Ralston http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. Brigantine "Matty," Scotland to New York, 1774 54 records; Robin Layton http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. "Diana," Scotland to Wilmington, North Carolina, September 1774; Harold A. Ralston http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. "Edinburgh," Campbeltown, Scotland to Cape Fear, North Carolina, 1770; Harold A. Ralston http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. "Britannic" and "Franconia," Liverpool and Cobh to New York, 1950; 1,277 records; Christina Parker Walker http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. SS "Italia," Naples, Italy to New York, June 1906, Partial List; 21 records; Karen Freilino http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. British Ship "Sarah," Glasgow, Scotland to New York, July 1850; Harold A. Ralston http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. U.S. Mail Steamer "New York," Southampton to New York via Cherbourg, 1914; Harold A. Ralston http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. "Wilmington," Belfast to New York, 1803 Harold A. Ralston http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ PASSENGER LISTS. DORGAN (surname), Arrivals from Ireland to Boston, 1848-1891; 150 records; S. Dorgan http://userdb.rootsweb.com/passenger/ ENGLAND. HADFIELD (surname), Births, Deaths and Marriages as recorded by the General Register Office of England & Wales 5,302 records; David Hadfield http://userdb.rootsweb.com/uki/ ENGLAND. Middlesex Parish Register 72,908 records; Sandy Coleman http://userdb.rootsweb.com/uki/ ENGLAND, Northamptonshire, Kingsthorpe. Marriages 1813-1837 478 records; Eric Parker http://userdb.rootsweb.com/uki/ IRELAND, County Galway. 1901 House & Building Census of Killimor 66 records; Patricia A. Barney http://userdb.rootsweb.com/uki/ IRELAND, Counties Tipperary and Limerick. Church Records -- Baptisms and Marriages; 1,570 records; Tony Riordan http://userdb.rootsweb.com/uki/ SCOTLAND. Buittle Parish History and Census Records 2,866 records; James Bell http://userdb.rootsweb.com/uki/ SCOTLAND. DUN (surname), Birth, Marriage, Death Indexes 404 records; Michael Dun http://userdb.rootsweb.com/uki/ UNITED KINGDOM. PEARLESS, PEERLESS (surname), 1881 Census Data 759 records; Douglas Pearless http://userdb.rootsweb.com/uki/ * * * WHO HAS THE DATA? Does your state, province, county, parish, or church have a database available that has not yet been placed on RootsWeb and that you think would be of interest to genealogists and historians? Do you have a database other than your personal family tree (personal genealogies are best posted at WorldConnect http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/ ) that you would like to share that you think would be of value and interest to others? In most cases, RootsWeb would be proud to host them. Please use the data submission form to tell us about such databases: http://userdb.rootsweb.com/submit.html * * * BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE. Many readers have expressed concern and outrage about a company known as FamilyDiscovery.com. If you have conflicts with this outfit, file complaints directly with the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection: http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/complaint.htm . The FTC has the power to investigate your concerns and to take appropriate action. MyFamily.com, RootsWeb, and Ancestry are currently investigating these concerns, and will respond as appropriate under current Fair Use Copyright and Truth in Advertising laws. As a public service to the genealogy community, the GENEALOGICAL WEB SITE WATCHDOG lists some Web sites that provide misleading or inaccurate genealogical information. It also provides links for submitting Internet fraud complaints. See http://www.ancestordetective.com/watchdog.htm * * * POSTCARDS AT ROOTSWEB. Send free electronic greetings to online family and friends from http://postcards.rootsweb.com/ Cards are available for all occasions and most holidays. Find ST. PATRICK'S DAY CARDS at http://postcards.rootsweb.com/sd.htm * * * SHAKING YOUR FAMILY TREE (SYFT) by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG. The World Wide Web makes searching for often-elusive Irish ancestors much easier than it was in the old days. However, you will need more than the luck of the Irish to dig up your roots in the Olde Sodde. Read this week's SYFT column at http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/syft/curcolumn.htm SYFT columns are archived by subject and can be browsed at http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/syft/ * * * ROOTSWEB'S GUIDE TO TRACING FAMILY TREES (RWGuide) http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/ ST. PATRICK'S DAY PAGE (genealogy, history, folklore, a wee bit of a language lesson, music, dance, recipes, and more) http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/notable/stpatrick.htm ** PAID ADVERTISEMENTS ** Get a FREE issue of FAMILY TREE MAGAZINE! Discovering, preserving, and celebrating your family history has never been easier (or more fun) than with help from FAMILY TREE MAGAZINE. Find all of the advice and information you need to uncover your family's past. Request your FREE issue today: http://www.familytreemagazine.com/specialoffers.asp?ikrwFREE * * * FREE online access to the most trusted family history textbook ever published -- Val Greenwood's THE RESEARCHER'S GUIDE TO AMERICAN GENEALOGY. Read it for free at http://www.genealogical.com/ Browse our catalogue of 2,000 reference books and CDs. Order one or more titles at full or sale price through 31 March 2001, and pay only a penny more to cover postage and handling. * * * The new HISTORY MAGAZINE is now on the newsstands but you can obtain a FREE trial copy by visiting http://www.history-magazine.com/ Articles include "How the Subway Transformed Cities," "Highlights of the 1770 Decade," "Tea, The Brew of Empires," "How Pigeons Became War Heroes," "Typhoid, a Disease That Devastated Our Ancestors," and many others. HISTORY MAGAZINE articles cover the social conditions that affected the lives of our ancestors. Check out our Web feature "This Day in History" by visiting http://www.history-magazine.com/ * * * Register your family name online. Start building your family tree now with your own "dot.com" address. In just a few simple steps, you can begin preserving family memories, histories, stories, and photos online. Names are going fast, so register today! http://www.werfamilynames.com/ * * * Visit Ancestry.com for a FREE 14-Day Trial and enjoy access to the No. 1 Source for Family History Online. Search more than 700 MILLION NAMES and trace your family tree today. Go to: www.ancestry.com/subscribe/subscribetrial1y.asp?sourcecode=F11GC ****************************************** FREE TWICE-MONTHLY E-MAIL NEWSLETTER Dozens of Books & CDs at Publisher-Only Sale Prices in Each Issue Visit http://www.heritagebooks.com & click on "Free Newsletter" HERITAGE BOOKS, INC. 1540 Pointer Ridge Place, Bowie MD 20716 ****************************************** The March/April issue of FAMILY CHRONICLE is on the newsstands or you can obtain a FREE trial copy by visiting http://www.familychronicle.com/ Articles include "Favorite Internet Research Tips," "Cemetery Records Online," "Naturalization Records," "How to Get the Most Out of Newspaper Research," "Family History Writing Contest," "Web Sites Worth Surfing," "How Genealogy Societies Really Work," and many others. Top journalist Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG has this to say: "If you haven't discovered FAMILY CHRONICLE you are in for a treat." Find out how you can obtain a FREE trial copy by visiting http://www.familychronicle.com/ * * * NEW CENSUS IMAGES ONLINE. Ancestry.com has posted 63,206 new images from the 1900 U.S. Federal Census, adding some data from Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indian Territory, Indiana, and Montana. Also, an additional 88,380 images were added to the 1920 Census for Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, New York, and Texas. For a complete list of available images, go to http://www.ancestry.com/search/io/main.htm For more information, or for subscription rates on the Census Images Online project at Ancestry.com, go to http://www.ancestry.com/search/io/about/main.htm ** END PAID ADVERTISEMENTS ** CONNECTING THROUGH ROOTSWEB. Thanks for sharing your stories. ROSE OF TRALEE by Ann Marie Moriarty OLDHOUSE@aol.com A half-dozen people we have never met have given my 78-year-old dad the gift of locating his grandparents' home village in Ireland, and a cousin. When my dad first got the notion to look for information about his Irish connections, all he had was oral tradition: all four of his grandparents had been born in County Kerry. Of the four, three bore surnames that were among the most common in Kerry: MORIARTY, SULLIVAN, and SHEA. The fourth, though, was unusual -- WILES. That grandmother had always said she was from Tralee, and that her family knew the SULLIVANs before coming to America and settling in Potter County, Pennsylvania. So we decided to start with the name WILES. I subscribed to RootsWeb's County Kerry mailing list, and lurked for about a year, soaking up information. About a year ago, when my dad decided he wanted to take my daughter and me to Ireland, I got serious and began to ask questions. The people on the list -- Mary (Waterlilys), who manages the list, and KerryKate, who is a researcher from Tralee now living in Canada, were most helpful. Mary sent me a citation from Griffith's Valuation, done in 1852 in Kerry, which is the nearest thing to a census that exists for that time period. If the name actually was WILES, there was only one possibility, a Charles WILE in Derrymore West, a village near Tralee. He was farming on land owned by the SULLIVANs. While it sounded good, we had no records to back it up. We made plans to go to Ireland in mid-October. A week or so before we left, I stayed up far too late poking around various and sundry genealogy sites, just in case. On the ROOTSWEB REVIEW that had arrived that day, the listings at the end mentioned that the 1860 Census Index for Potter County, Pennsylvania had been posted, by, I learned later, Rose Matthews and Sheri Graves. I clicked on the link and found, to my amazement, Charles WILES, his wife, Margaret, and various children -- but not my great- grandmother Sarah WILES, as she married in 1859 and was living in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania by then. We still were not sure that it was her family, though. We had St. John's parish in Tralee check for her birth record, but their records only went back as far as 1853. On the off chance that the village church, being on the border of a neighboring parish, might have sent the records there, we wrote, but came up empty again. We did speak with a lady in the town of Camp, next to Derrymore West, who, we were told, "knew everything about everybody." Mary Dunn told us all about "Old Charlie WYLES" who would likely have been the nephew of the Charles who went to America. His grandson now lives and farms in Silver Springs, County Clare, and she gave us his address, but I was loathe to contact him until I had a more substantial link. My dad had always been told his grandparents' marriage records were lost in a church fire, but I encouraged him to try the Lycoming County, Pennsylvania courthouse, in case civil records existed. They didn't, but the office sent him to the public library, and there a librarian produced a transcription (by volunteers unknown) of the weddings in the German Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in Bastress, Pennsylvania. At first, he said, he didn't see anything that looked like it could be a marriage between John SHEA and Sarah WILES. But then, by guessing at the month of the wedding based on the age of the eldest child, he found an entry for Johannes SCHEY (son of Michael SCHEY and Catherine HOGAN) marrying Rosa VIOLE (daughter of Carl VIOLE and Margarethe McDONAL). That triggered a hazy recollection of references to an "uncle" named Hogan. Realizing that the pastor, Fr. Grunder, was probably German, and that he had written the entry phonetically as he heard it, my dad was certain he had found his grandparents, and linked them with Charles and Margaret WILES of Potter County, Pennsylvania, formerly of Derrymore West, County Kerry, Ireland. Of course, we still don't know why dad's grandmother's name was rendered as Rosa -- and probably never will -- but now we have his four great-grandparents' names as well, and it is all thanks to people who gave of their time to transcribe these records for libraries and for the Web. Blessings to you all! * * * * * MAILING LISTS. For an index to the more than 21,000 RootsWeb- hosted genealogy mailing lists, visit http://lists.rootsweb.com/ NEW MAILING LIST REQUESTS. Please request new mailing lists at http://resources.rootsweb.com/adopt/ TO SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE from a RootsWeb-hosted mailing list, send e-mail 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 are interested in culture, history, or genealogy in Greece, e-mail your subscribe request to GREECE-L-request@rootsweb.com NEW SURNAME MAILING LISTS, GENCONNECT BOARDS, AND CLUSTERS Booz, Brieck, Brighton Cap, Crisswell Deeg, Demonia, Diuguid Feil, File, Fishinghawk, Freiburg, Fryburg Hagger, Hamersley, Hibbler, Hibler, Hileman, Hogarth Ingleby, Inglesant, Istre Jiggins Killoran, Kolek, Kozel, Kutschke Langtry, Lebreton McCarey, McCarry, McCartan, McCary, McSurley Mersinger, Mir Neder, Noell Paullins, Pennefather, Pfeil, Prosser-Charles (descendants of Charles PROSSER) Ranse, Reger, Retallick, Rogers-Stephen-NS (descendants of Stephen ROGERS of Connecticut and Nova Scotia) Shinholser, Sitler, Spiby, Springstead Vinge Wanio, Westerhold, Wittenbrink NEW REGIONAL MAILING LISTS CANADA CAN-NB-KENT -- Kent County, New Brunswick CAN-ONT-NIPISSING -- a "non-society" Ontario County/District mailing list DEUTSCHLAND (GERMANY) DEU-SIEGERLAND -- genealogy in Siegen/Siegerland, Nordrhein- Westfalen, Germany ENGLAND ENG-STS-SEDGLEY -- Sedgley, Staffordshire GREECE GREECE -- historical, cultural, and genealogical interest in Greece. IRAN IRAN -- Iranian genealogy, history and culture. Political discussion discouraged. U.S.A. IN-BLOOMINGTON-UHS -- for those who attended University High School in Bloomington, Indiana NC-JC-REUNION -- plan, participate, attend the annual Johnston County Reunion (in North Carolina) WALES GWREIDDIAU -- all Wales; Welsh language used on this list WALES-LOCAL-HISTORY -- local history and historical events ETHNIC AND SPECIAL INTEREST MAILING LISTS COUSINS-MAYBE -- for those with multiple listings of one or more surnames KICKAPOO -- history and genealogy of the Kickapoo, Kikapu, Kiikaapoa people who are Eastern Woodlands Native Americans. There are Kickapoo reservations in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Mexico. PAGE-DNA -- discussion of specific group DNA testing currently being done by PAGE descendants PATRIOTS-WAR -- gathering information on Canadian and U.S.A. participants in the Patriots War SUVCW-OKCAMP4 -- members of the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War, Capt. Thomas W. Custer OK Camp # 4 * * * * * NEW WEB ACCOUNT REQUESTS. Please see the instructions at http://accounts.rootsweb.com/ 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. http://www.rootsweb.com/~[account name]. Note that the ~[tilde] before the account name is required. FOR EXAMPLE, to visit the Web page for Brazil, go to http://www.rootsweb.com/~brawgw/ AUSTRALIA austashs -- Tasmanian Family History Service CANADA nbcwater -- Waterford Parish, New Brunswick IRELAND irldon -- County Donegal SOUTH AMERICA brawgw -- Brazil U.S.A. inlpccem -- LaPorte County, Indiana cemeteries nycalexa -- Alexandria, New York (city) nytwhs -- Town of Watertown Historical Society (New York) ohclkmig -- Clark County, Ohio Migrations Project txttrudc -- Terry's Texas Rangers Chapter 2426, United Daughters of the Confederacy wvwchs -- Webster County Historical Society (West Virginia) SOME NEW HOMEPAGES AND FREEPAGES ALGONQUIN OF COASTAL CAROLINA from the time of Sir Walter Raleigh's "Lost Colony" to the intermarriage of Native Americans with white settlers and black slaves. http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~jmack/algonqin/algonqin.htm CANADA. THE MARITIME'S MOST WANTED SITE. Post hard-to-find or "most wanted" ancestors in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~easternpassage/mmw.html ENGLAND. FOLKESTONE FAMILIES. Genealogical pages for those researching families from Folkestone, Kent, England. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~folkestonefamilies/ HUTCHINSON. Descendants of Richard HUTCHINSON, b. 1602, Arnold, Nottinghamshire, England; immigrated to Massachusetts circa 1630; d. 26 September 1682, Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts. Includes descendants of both male and female lines. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~rhutch/ MACKEY and EDWARDS GENEALOGY. Families from Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas. Also includes HARRIS, PERKINS, HAWKINS, WEAVER, RIDENOUR, SHERROD, JOHNSON, and REYNOLDS. http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/~veragenes/ OTT: A LINK TO THE PAST. Family histories of Jack and Carol OTT. Surnames include OTT, ROTH, NOOYEN, and HERMANS in Wisconsin; HOPPER, Ohio and Indiana; SUMMERS, UTZ, and BAKER, Virginia and southern Indiana; and HAHN and SPRENGELER, southern Minnesota. http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~jackott/ PANGLE INLAWS AND OUTLAWS. In-depth study of PANGLE, et. al. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~toomuchtime/ WARMOTH, WARMOUTH, WARMATH, WARMUTH and OTHERS. Primarily descendants of Thaddeus Hardwidge WARMOTH and wife Winney, but the database contains information on other spellings and lines. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~warmoth/ WERTMAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION. For WERTMAN researchers worldwide, but primarily focusing on descendants of George Philip WERTMAN, who in 1749 warranted land in Lynn Township, present-day Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~wertman/ * * * * * GENCONNECT. RootsWeb hosts many surname GenConnect boards that are in need of people to maintain them. o For a complete list of adoptable GenConnect surname boards http://genconnect.rootsweb.com/surnames/adoptable/ o For the form to request to adopt a GenConnect surname board (the same form is used for surname mailing list requests) http://resources.rootsweb.com/adopt/ GENCONNECT GLITCHES AND GREMLINS. GenConnect postings for parts of February 2001 are not archived on some boards. The technical staff uncovered a drive failure, which had caused some messages to be excluded from the current archive. Recovery efforts are underway to restore these February postings as quickly as possible. During this time, GenConnect is fully functional and new posts can be submitted as usual. Thanks for being patient. We are dependent upon the kindness of strangers. * * * * * USGENWEB ARCHIVES. THE ARCHIVES NEWSLETTER contains the USGenWeb Archives submissions during the last week. http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/newsletter/index.htm USGW-ARCHIVES-ANNOUNCE is a read-only mailing list for weekly announcements of updates and submissions to the USGenWeb Archives. To subscribe, send e-mail that says only SUBSCRIBE to USGW-ARCHIVES-ANNOUNCE-L-REQUEST@rootsweb.com DAILY-UPLOADS-L is a read-only mailing list that announces every file uploaded or changed in the USGenWeb Archives. To subscribe, send e-mail that says only SUBSCRIBE to DAILY-UPLOADS-L-REQUEST@rootsweb.com * * * * * LETTERS TO THE EDITORS. Please send letters and all submissions as plain text e-mail messages (no attachments or html) to RWR-Editors@rootsweb.com Last year, as a result of one of my Social Security Death Index (SSDI) http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/ Post-ems, I was thrilled to find a branch of my father's family that had been lost to us for almost 70 years. Because of this and being a regular reader of ROOTSWEB REVIEW, I knew that once impossible connections are being made daily as a result of RootsWeb and WorldConnect http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/ . This said, I was still totally surprised by what happened a couple of weeks ago. I received an e-mail from a lovely lady, Peggy Dyas of Virginia Beach, Virginia. It seems that about 10 years ago she bought several boxes of old magazines at a garage sale, put them aside, and had not looked at them again until recently. As a beginning genealogist she discovered what a wonderful resource RootsWeb was and decided to see if she could make a connection. She found a small photograph of a baby girl in a February 1927 BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS MAGAZINE. The photo had been used as filler. The copy read: "Mrs. Hood ABNEY of Napton, Missouri sends this picture of one of the fairest flowers in her garden." Peggy's e-mail to me said she found a Hood ABNEY on my WorldConnect pages and asked if I might be related to the lady who sent the photo. I answered immediately, thanking her and telling her yes, the Mrs. Hood ABNEY of Napton was my grandmother and the "fairest flower" was probably one of my mother's younger sisters. She e-mailed a scanned copy of the page and I determined that the photo was probably of my Aunt Agnes as a toddler; but nobody in the family had ever seen it, or the magazine before! Grandmother ABNEY was the busy wife of a hard-working farmer with five small children. She was an amateur artist, loved flowers and her garden, but had little free time to spend on these hobbies. Not only did Peggy Dyas send me the entire magazine, she refused payment of any kind for it. As a result of her generosity and RootsWeb, I was able to give my aunt a priceless gift -- a 75-year-old remembrance of her mother's love. Cynthia McBride nonparatus@yahoo.com Recently, about 50 records I donated to RootsWeb were added to a database. Not only did I have the fun of seeing my name in the newsletter, but also I had the pleasure of receiving a "thank you" letter from a girl seeking part of the family data I had sent. The material was unrelated to the name I was researching and simply became part of my records. How many of the almost 800,000 ROOTSWEB REVIEW readers have perhaps 10 records they could donate to RootsWeb? Could you handle eight million more records? [Oh, yes indeed. Eds.] Louise Kohle billnwese@aol.com Andy Waddington's letter regarding using map references to identify towns and villages ("Finding and Documenting Locations" in RWR 4:10) was very sensible, but he [did not] mention that there have been many changes of county boundaries in the United Kingdom over the last 100 years. I . . . always record places of [events] with the parish and county in which it was situated when the event took place. If one wishes to refer to original records, they are normally located in the archives of the county where the parish was originally located, not the later county. To give an example, there is no point in looking for an early Will for a person who died in Abingdon, now listed as in Oxfordshire, in the records of the Archdeaconry of Oxfordshire, because until about 30 years ago, Abingdon was in Berkshire. This applies to many thousands of parishes and villages in the UK and is an important point to bear in mind when planning an itinerary from overseas, with an intention to visit records offices in the UK. . . To trace all leads, it is important to have both locations. Keith Hazell gkhazell@teleline.es [Re U.K. Place Names in RWR 4:9 and 4:10] The other thing I have found about birth places in censuses is that the further the informant is from home at the time of the census, the less information there is. So when, some years ago, I was involved with transcribing the 1881 census for Wotton-under-Edge, the small town in Gloucestershire where I live, I found that someone born and still living in the town would give the name of the suburb or part of the town where they were born. However, if they lived in the city of Gloucester (22 miles away), they would give their place of birth as Wotton-under-Edge. If they lived in London, 100 miles away, they would probably say Gloucestershire. If they were in another country they might well say England. By the same token, I noticed in transcribing that the birthplaces of people not born here were recorded much more vaguely -- e.g., America or Ireland. To someone in another county then, there might not be much difference between Glos and Gloucester. Also, I don't think you can assume that the enumerator then could know how much importance we would attach to that information all these years later. Treat it with caution and keep an open mind about how accurate it might be. Glenys Sykes glenyssykes@yahoo.com Thanks to RootsWeb, I subscribed to Norway mailing lists [see mailing lists index at http://lists.rootsweb.com/ ] and found a pen pal from high school in Norway. We had lost touch in the early 1970s. [This is another example of] "kind acts of genealogy" by list members. [See Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness at http://raogk.rootsweb.com/ .] Heather, New Brunswick, Canada ghc@nbnet.nb.ca * * * * * HUMOR. Last week we mistakenly identified the pillaged princess and sodden amphibian item as this year's winner of the San Jose State University English Department's Bulwer-Lytton contest. It seems it was a runner-up in the 1983 contest. We thank RWR readers Ellery A. Bardos Ebardos@aol.com and Barbara Hill bhill@uclink4.berkeley.edu for telling us and for advice that this year's contest will accept entries until 15 April 2001 either electronically or by snail mail to: Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, Department of English, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192-0090 USA. For contest details and a description of the categories, see http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ . In an effort to redeem ourselves, we present one of the co-winners (both perpetrated by John L. Ashman, Houston, Texas) in a specialized category of the Y2K Bulwer-Lytton contest: `We have created a monster, Doktor Frankenstein!' screeched Igor, the doktor's right and left hand man, his little body quivering with delight, and before the good doctor could stop him Igor waved various human limbs and organs in the patchwork face of the giant, howling, `Tell me, stranger, are you from these parts?' * * * * * ROOTSWEB REVIEW and MISSING LINKS do not answer or publish queries. You can subscribe to the relevant surname and locality mailing lists http://lists.rootsweb.com/ and then post queries to those lists. You can do searches of all of RootsWeb's resources by starting at RootsWeb's main page http://www.rootsweb.com/. You will also want to search the WorldConnect database frequently, as new material is added daily (that database now contains more than 60.2 million entries). Any letter, story, or article submitted for consideration for publication in MISSING LINKS or ROOTSWEB REVIEW should be sent as a plain text e-mail message to rwr-editors@rootsweb.com PERMISSION TO REPRINT articles from ROOTSWEB REVIEW is granted unless specifically stated otherwise, PROVIDED: (1) the reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes; and (2) the following notice appears at the end of the article: Written by [author's name, e-mail address, and URL, if given]. Previously published by RootsWeb.com, Inc., RootsWeb Review: RootsWeb's Genealogy News, Vol. 4, No. 11, 14 March 2001. RootsWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/ BACK ISSUES OF ROOTSWEB REVIEW and MISSING LINKS are fully SEARCHABLE. Search all or download a specific issue by following the links at http://e-zine.rootsweb.com/ TO UNSUBSCRIBE from the free weekly genealogy e-zines, ROOTSWEB REVIEW and MISSING LINKS, send any e-mail to: rootsweb-review-unsubscribe@rootsweb.com TO SUBSCRIBE, send to rootsweb-review-subscribe@rootsweb.com