CHAT ON THE NET
(Please be aware this post was written in 2003 and published at that time in the Houston Chronicle (Houston, Texas) newspaper. Some of the news in this post, therefore, may not be current. Current and future posts on this blog may revisit and update news on this and other posts on this blog. If you have questions and/or suggestions, please send Mic a note using the comment page -Don’t forget to use the orange “subscribe” button to receive new posts-Thanks, Mic)
For nearly twenty years America Online, AOL, a subscription based commercial website, has been known as one of the best sites on the Internet to chat, discuss and learn about genealogy. AOL, now a subsidiary of Time-Warner, is evicting the genealogical chat rooms and they have migrated to a new home at http://www.genealogyforum.org/ .
Owned by George Ferguson and Golden Gate Services the new website will sponsor all types of free chat rooms and for fee classes. Among the chats scheduled at press time are Beginning Genealogy, Civil War, research chat groups covering many different states, particularly those in the South, New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. There are also a number of ethnic chats, such as, African American, Native American, Scandinavian, French, French Canadian, British Isles, Irish, Scottish, Jewish, Italian, Polish and Portuguese.
Golden Gate’s older website at http://www.genealogyforum.com/ is still available and has a host of free useful links, posted help pages, resource and informational pages and class room sites for online genealogical classes.
Another website, Rootsweb.com, at http://www.rootsweb.com features free e-mail discussion groups with thousands of surnames and a number of other genealogical subjects.
To subscribe to the mailing lists click on the tab labeled Mailing Lists which is located at the top of the main page. Once on the mailing lists page one will have a choice of searching, browsing or subscribing to any of thousands of free lists dedicated to surnames, states, countries, foreign countries, ethnic or other groups.
Among the extraneous other mailing lists are those discussing adoptions, military organizations and campaigns, immigration, fraternal organizations, religious groups and their records, heraldry and nobility, genealogical computing, software and technical subjects.
LEARN GENEALOGY
Offered by Leisure Learning, I will teach an introductory course on conducting family history research, Roots of Genealogy-How To Research Your Family Tree. The class will be held from 7 P.M. to 10 P.M. Tuesday September 9 at Leisure Learning’s 2990 Richmond Avenue campus. The following week the class will tour Clayton Genealogical Library and conduct on-site census research. Registration for this class is $35. For more information and to register, contact Leisure Learning at 713-529-4414.
DATABASE TALK AT LAKE JACKSON CHANGED
Karen Stanley, genealogical librarian at Clayton Genealogical Library, will deliver her talk, Be a Power Searcher: Genealogical Research Using Clayton’s Online Databases, to the Brazosport Genealogical Society Tuesday September 9 at 7:30 p.m. rather than September 23 as reported in this column last week. The society meets at the Lake Jackson Library, 250 Circle Way in Lake Jackson. For more information contact Linda Barney at 979-297-9937 or by email at txbarneys@orbitworld.net .
NEW GENEALOGICAL GUIDE AVAILABLE
The editors of Family Tree Magazine have compiled a book very useful for those just getting started in genealogy and for those who have been researching a while.
The Family Tree Guide Book: Everything You Need To Know to Trace Your Genealogy Across North America begins with an informative introduction by Houston author Emily Anne Croom. It continues by describing resources and facilities throughout the various regions of the United States. It then highlights over 1,300 genealogical websites, 2,000 Family History Centers, 200 archives and libraries and 38 in-depth genealogical guides to various cities around the United States including the Texas cities of Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio.
The Family Tree Guide Book is available for $19.99 from Betterway Books, 4700 E. Galbraith Rd, Cincinnati, OH 45236.
