Online Roots: How to Discover Your Familys History and Heritage With the Power of the Internet (National Genealogical Society Guides)

Since I am new to the field of genealogy I purchased several books starting with the Researchers Guide to American Genealogy. In order to do more research using my computer several more books were purchased. It was not until I purchased "On line Roots" that I found the one book that helped me the most and could have saved me $$ had I purchased it sooner.I would recommend this book to anyone. It might be of value to people who have been working on genealogies for some time. I think it's worth checking out to see if it might assist you.

Online Roots by Pamela Boyer Porter, and Amy Johnson Crow is the companion book to Genealogy 101 also published by the National Genealogical Society (NGS). This is a must have book. Like the 101 book this is packed full of more resources than you can even process in one sitting or read. The first chapters are a repeat of some basics like interviewing your oldest living relatives and record their stories and info. Then gather all documents and records around your home and immediate family. Then compile your tree and gather the vital documents. Now enter the internet. The internet or web is a vast window into so many areas of research that can help your find ancestor's names and possibly their port of entry and country of origin for the emigrant ancestors. There are many chapters that help you flesh out the names and dates. This book reminds you that each of those names is a person with a life that deserves to be remembered. They had a job, family, successes and failures. So with chapters like Wading Deeper, Visiting the Courthouse, Finding clues to Military service and discovering Ancestors at work and worship, you find different avenues you never thought of to put flesh on the bones of your pedigree. Read the history of the area they are from and discover why they moved there or left. Read about the jobs or booms in the area and get a better understanding of the life your ancestor lived. Maybe you will find court papers from a trial or divorce. Maybe you will locate land deeds or bills of sale for items in a town. Each thing may give a clue to finding the next generation or even clarifying a mystery in the family lore. This was definitely a great book to read through for a novice like myself to start planning, but I can see this book will also become a companion and reference book as I climb my own family tree. As I take each branch I will use this book to ensure I flesh out as many details as I can before skipping to the next. I think this tool will help ensure that I pass on a full, interesting and informative family history and not just a list of names and dates to my kin now and unborn.

I have to admit this book was a bit overwhelming for someone trying to get a handle on geneology, and just focusing on certain of his lineage without too many frills. This is not a criticism, however, since this book is supposed to be a reference book more than anything else, and the author is trying and succeeding in giving us as much information as she can. I did read it from cover to cover to get the lay of the land, and found it well-written, thorough, and careful in its exposition of the subject. It was recommended by the more general Geneology 101, and was a good follow-up. This book took 101 a step further in showing us how to take max advantage of the net and save some foot steps. It was interesting to me that the author pursued so much detail about so much of her extended family, such as great-great uncles, and third cousins once-removed. I also was intrigued by her effort to get supporting information about the areas her forbears lived in, the geographical properties, the commerce going on there, the character and feel of the area, etc. It is more than I would want to go after, at least just starting; though it would be fun to have some of this background. The biggest tips are to sign-up for a paid online service like ancestry.com, and to join a geneological society, even if only an online bulletin board set-up. Indeed, all roads seemed to end at ancestry.com as I found out. I would start out on a free website sited in the book, looking for something specific, and would be led to ancestor.com, with its notice of a 14-day free trial. Now that I've read Geneology 101 and Online Roots, I'll probably take advantage of that offer. She also strongly recommended looking for work someone else has already done on your family tree. There are sites where you can get this, and again it looks like ancestry.com is the biggest. She also recommended free tutorial websites before getting started, and that might have been the best advice of all. I believe I'm ready to start my journey and I'll update this review when I see how it goes.

Regular readers of my reviews (here and elsewhere) will know that I cast a chary eye on books that purport to introduce the reader to the miracle of "Internet genealogy." I've read and reviewed dozens of such titles from the viewpoint of a researcher of more than thirty years' experience (beginning in the days of spiral notebooks and 3x5 cards) who is also a thoroughly wired computer geek and a heavy user of the Internet. I have long maintained that online research is simply the (sometimes) more convenient continuance by other means of traditional, tried and true methods. There is no "royal road to genealogy," no universal database from which you can immediately download your entire lineage back to Adam. Most of the books I've seen fall into two categories: Introductions to traditional genealogy with a thin icing of information on genealogical software and Internet how-to, and "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Computers and the Internet"-type volumes that include specific genealogical applications as an afterthought. There are a few, like Elizabeth Powell Crowe's *Genealogy Online: Researching Your Roots* (1998), Matt Helm's *Genealogy Online for Dummies* (1998), and Pamela Hahn's *The Unofficial Guide to Online Genealogy* (2001), which actually are quite useful and are worth reading (though all three are inevitably becoming dated), but these are very much the exception. The rest are simply exercises in marketing. Pam Porter is a Certified Genealogical Records Specialist, a very experienced author and lecturer who has edited the APG QUARTERLY and presently serves on the FGS Board of Trustees. Amy Crow, a Certified Genealogist, also is well-known as an author and speaker, has served on the boards of several national organizations, and chairs First Families of Ohio. (She also is the overall editor for this series.) And the acknowledgments section lists many other names that are immediately recognizable. Their stated target audience includes (1) those new to genealogy but seasoned computerists, (2) those experienced in family research but novices online, and (3) those new to both. In other words, almost everyone. But it's encouraging to note that the third paragraph includes the explicit warning, "No, it's not all online yet." Yes, field trips to courthouses and libraries and your local Family History Center are still necessary. But more and more information is indeed being made available online everyday, especially by government agencies for whom online public access is a great money-saver in terms of staff time. The authors point out, too, that much of what you'll find online, while not necessarily an answer to a specific relationship question, provides easily accessible contextual information -- county histories, details of migration patterns in previously unexplored states, the locations of railroad corporate archives, and similar data to help you to profitably focus your research. But "you won't be able to construct your entire family

This work is one of the first that seems to approach the use of the internet as a great tool, while still supporting and instructing standard research techniques. Easy to follow and loads of examples make this book a useful helper with my own family research. The variety of online sites is enhanced with actual case studies and sample screens for beginners. I would recommend this book for a novice or experienced researcher.