Lifestyle

Narrow topic when searching on Web
Heritage Hunting: Internet makes work of genealogist easier, Beverly Smith Vorpahl says.

Beverly Smith Vorpahl
The Spokesman-Review

It's been said that God had man invent computers so genealogists could research their ancestors better. I'm not sure about that, but the Internet has certainly made life easier for those of us hunting our heritage. The Internet has changed forever how the world does its business, as well as how genealogists do their searching.

Computers and genealogists have become "Velcroed."

Professional genealogists often use the Internet to search for names, Pat Hatcher said in a recent online column for Ancestry.com. Besides e-mail, most pros go online to access library catalogues.

Hatcher's colleagues customarily search for information about local history and lifestyle. Many early, out-of-copyright town and county histories have been converted to text form on the Internet and can be found on commercial sites, free sites, and institutional sites ranging from local governments to universities, as well as personal Web sites.

To learn the social history of your ancestors, do a search on adjectives that might be apropos to them, such as "coal mining," "indentured servant," "soddy," "midwife," or "wagon train," and you'll open up a rich learning experience, Hatcher wrote.

To find those sites, log onto a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo!, or the Web search that comes with your online server, like Microsoft's MSN. Enter the town and state where your ancestors lived and you'll get more possibilities than you can imagine. When I'm looking for such info, I'll type in the town and state, adding "and genealogy," which narrows the playing field to a more manageable number of hits.

I'm writing a narrative on a great-grandfather and wanted to know how covered wagons were built and what pioneers packed into them. Information available from the many, many sites will provide rich material to my project.

I also wanted to know more about the Chisholm Trail where cowboys herded longhorn cattle right through the town where my great-grandfather had first chosen to live. On the MSN "Search the Web," I plugged in "Chisholm Trail," and came up with some 21,839 hits, give or take a few hundred. I narrowed the field by requesting "Chisholm Trail and Kansas," and received "only" 5,830 hits ready to be read. Among the first 15 were great possibilities.

Hatcher suggested looking in the Library of Congress. What a great idea that was! There were 702 sites available about the Chisholm Trail, and the few that immediately popped on my screen were so interesting that I wanted to read them and finish this column later. (But, I didn't.)

Our ancestors can lead us to the most extraordinary spots, even though we were never able to meet them. But by delving into a little research, we can come closer to knowing them vicariously.

There will be more on this subject in next week's column.

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