Have you ever visited a website for a genealogical record or piece of information only to find that it has disappeared because the site no longer exists or the page has been updated? If so, the Way Back Machine could be for you.

The Way Back Machine is an online software program that stores copies of web pages as at a certain date. Unlike Google who stores the cached page only until a new copy is retrieved, the Way Back Machine stores multiple copies of the same page which you can look at by selecting the date you want.

While not every site or URL is in its database there are over 55 million pages. If you have a broken bookmark or link or just can't find something that you thought used to be there, then the check out the Way Back Machine at http://www.archive.org.

Are you stuck? We all hit a brick wall in our family history research from time to time. Here are some strategies for breaking through these walls.

1. Make a list of everything you really know.
• You will need to revisit all your associated records to do this.
• You may have missed a tiny snippet of information that could be the key to the puzzle.
• Don’t be afraid to throw out family legends.

2. Determine what it is you really need to know.
• Are you looking for the right information to help you move to the next step?

3. Where are the logical places to look for that information.
• Use guidebooks (such as the LDS resource guides available at www.familysearch.org) to educate yourself on what is available.
• Check all available sources and record when you DON’T find something as well as when you do.
• Don’t assume that people are dead just because they are missing. Making sure you have exhausted all avenues before making assumptions.

4. Get creative with spellings.
• Try common misspellings or phonetic spellings.
• Try wildcard * ? searches on computerized searches (* = anything, ? = replaces one character only)

5. Try following other people.
• What about his/her siblings?
• What about their traveling companions or neighbors?
• Are there any clues in traditional naming patterns or middle names?
• Who are the witnesses to an event?
• Who are the neighbors/boarders?

6. Try following their land rather than them.
• If they are landowners follow the plot or find the same address on a census record.
Search Suggestion Tools
• Newer genealogy software has them (Legacy 6)
• Existing tools like Gensmarts
IGI Search Integration
• Legacy 6, Rootsmagic 3, TMG 6 – allows users to search on ancestor in database directly from the genealogy program and it will fill in info and retrieve matches based on the information you have entered into your genealogy program. Legacy has an advantage over the other software as you can do this for all or batches of people at a time.

The LDS Church has been making some updates to its www.familysearch.org site which doesn't happen that often so I thought they are worthy of mentioning.

First off is that PAF companion now has a FREE version. This version provides some new reports to PAF but is restricted to 3 generations only (full version offers 10 generations). For those of you using PAF 5 this is a great option for some new reports at no cost. It is interesting that this is being done now after the Church acknowledged that it is not actively working on a PAF6 although this was pretty obvious from the way PAF was acquired, the amount of updates occurring in the last 5 years and from its purpose - to help Church members collect information to submit for temple ordinances. The program meets those goals and does not need updating unless a major technological change occurs making it stop functioning (like the DOS versions of PAF when Windows 95 came along).

Secondly, the Church has just launched a new African American Resources page. This page organizes all resources specifically catering to this often neglected but very large segment of the US population. There are no new records yet but I notice there is a very prominent link to the indexing project on this page. This page will also eventually hold the video presentations from the Afro-American Historical and Genealogy Society conference.

As a sidenote, if you don't know about the indexing project, the Church wants to accelerate the rate at which it is indexing its millions of microfilms by having us do it for them. Just 30 mins is all it takes to contribute to this project and the records will be made available to the public for free (the Church is an official charitable organization). A quick look at this page indicates they are working on the 1900 US census as the next major project. If you'd like to help, you can sign up here.

I thought you deserved an update on the Rootsmagic situation as I mentioned a while ago that it was in the mail. I received the disk and manual a little over a week ago and was very impressed with the packaging of the product as the CD ROM is well packaged in a sturdy protective case (albeit oversized like a DVD case) and the book was very professional in appearance.

I have been carrying the book around with me waiting for some time to read it before I installed the program. Yes I am one of THOSE people (gotta read the manual, typical woman). I finally finished reading it yesterday. It was a well written book and only took a few hours even though it was packed with lots of useful information and thorough explanations of how the program works.

I am glad I read the book as I was pleasantly suprised to learn that Rootsmagic has the following features:
- IGI search and UPDATE (Legacy has this, but TMG only has the search);
- book/report publishing center (Legacy has this, TMG doesn't although you can have multi report table of contents and indexes);
- real footnotes/endnotes (actually I was told this and it is the only reason for getting Rootsmagic, Legacy doesn't but TMG does);
- integration with GenSmarts. I love Gensmarts - if you haven't tried it and you don't have Legacy - get it! (Legacy has a similar feature and I am not sure if you need both although I hear GenSmarts is better, subsequently Legacy doesn't have in-program integration although TMG does);
- communication log. I mentioned the communication log in one of my previous postings. The fact that it has custom fields for recording your emails and letters etc is great. Legacy only offers a workaround using the research log at this time, same with TMG.

Anyway, stay tuned as I'm planning a more in depth review/discussion of this program in the next week, just as soon as I've given it a thorough test drive.

I've been watching the "Ancestors In The Attic" show for a few weeks now and while some of the research scenarios are quite touching, I am highly disappointed in the research methodology and tactics being taught.

For a couple of weeks now the online version of the International Genealogical Index (IGI) has been used to piece together 3/4/5 generations of a family. The IGI can be quite useful when the records referred to are extractions as opposed to patron submissions (although these have their value too), although frequently records are incorrectly transcribed. As with any index you need to consult the original records to check for errors and, often where there is a lot of people in one area or parish with the same surname, use other corroborating evidence to check that it is the same person or family (address, witnesses, occupations). Yet none of this is mentioned when genealogy expert Paul McGrath puts together entire family trees using this tool.

In addition he even seems to fail to understand what this database actually is as he tells the audience it is a database of births and marriages, when in fact it is a database of people having had LDS temple ordinances performed for them and as part of the identification process, christening NOT birth, marriage, burial NOT death events have been recorded (included extracted from original records around the world). It is not complete for any geographic location but is substantially complete for Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Another thing that concerns me about this show is how the experts fly to the geographic location in question or visit an archive in person. Do none of these archives have a telephone? What about address or web site?

And I guess none of these archives have had their records microfilmed by the LDS church so they aren't available through the 3000 or so family history centers worldwide.

I can't fathom some of the conclusions being offered on the show. This week Paul McGrath concluded that because two people had the same MacAdam surname, lived 13km apart, one generation apart, that they MUST be related. Not could be, may be, probably were, but ARE related. He told the woman in question that she was a descendant of this famous person when in fact there was no supporting evidence just a common surname and locale. Amazing!

Over the past 8 years or so of working in family history centers, I have seen lots of questionable research by patrons. And while it is commendable to try to encourage genealolgical research using the mass medium of TV we have to make sure that the research being performed as a result is held to the same standards of evidence as that used by the rest of the genealogical community. If we don't, these people might be claiming ancestors that don't actually belong to them.

This posting was made in response to DearMyrt's October podcast where she discusses the parentsearch function which is only available in the CD ROM version of the IGI (available in Family History Centers). The IGI is an event based database and families are not organized by family group sheet which makes finding all the children of a couple difficult unless you use this parentsearch feature. As the CD ROM version of the IGI is no longer being updated and the newest version is the online version, many people are disappointed that they can't to a parent search using the online version.

Myrtle offers a simple solution to this by suggesting that you can leave the first name blank, enter the last name and then put in the parents names to search. However, in 7 years of using the site I have NEVER been able to do this. In fact, I checked again after listening to DearMyrtle's podcast. I receive the error message:
"If you enter a last name without a first name, you must either not enter parent or spouse names, a year, or you must enter a batch number or a film number"

I don't know why DearMyrt thinks it can be done but if I can't do it (and I've worked in the software industry for 9 years) then you probably won't be able to either!

However, over the years I've developed my own way of doing a similar search and am going to give you instructions that will enable you to search on all children with a specific last name in the same parish. While this is not a foolproof method to identify all siblings of your ancestor (some might be christened in other parishes) it does work for those in the same parish. Here are the instructions.

First if you go to the

Its nice to know that there is still some innovation in family history software. Yesterday I received a press release from Rootsmagic Inc (the company that puts out the Rootsmagic program) about a new software product called Family Atlas.

This program creates family maps by plotting locations from your genealogy program (most programs are supported). You can select places by event or ancestor as well as mark them by hand. You can also use the program like a gazetteer and with 3.5 million places it looks like you will almost always be able to find the right place. Border and boundary changes are also shown (something really important if your ancestors are from the US or Continental Europe).

Too bad there isn't a trial version. I'm still looking for hubby's great-grandparents birthplaces in Poland: Wilcziska, Schedletz and Andreaspol, Sulsfield, Petergow (and if you know where these places are, please drop me a line).

Anyway, I'm hoping that we'll hear more about Family Atlas soon and maybe even more from Rootsmagic (I'm still waiting for a version of Personal Historian that will import citations from your genealogy program - aren't we all about citing our sources!).

To read more about Family Atlas see http://www.familyatlas.com/