Time Travel with the Wayback Machine

Have you ever been searching for information about an ancestor and came across a website that is no longer accessible? Just the other day the information I desperately needed was in RootsWeb, and Ancestry.com has locked up this valuable resource because of security reasons. I used the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org ) to find the information I needed. It was pretty slick. The Wayback Machine is time travel for genealogists!

The Wayback machine is great for recovering lost information from the internet and especially information locked up in RootsWeb. In the search bar on the Wayback Machine’s home page, you enter the URL or words related to a site’s homepage. The Wayback Machine has over 505 billion archived web pages dating back to 1996. This machine crawls through the web taking snapshots of websites every so often.

Internet archive is making it easier to access archived versions of dead web pages. It now has an add-on for the Google Chrome browser. If you land on a web page that gives you an error code such as “page not found” or “404,” this extension will query the Wayback Machine to check for anything in the archives.

The Wayback Machine can be a lifesaver if you have on an old web link that no longer works or “link rot” as many have put it. Link rot does not just happen to websites; it happens to our citations also. Our citations should lead us back to where we found our information and if we included the URL and it has changed then we have problems with our citations.

It is important to remember that the Web is not permanent. An article that you regularly refer to can suddenly vanish. If the item was valuable to your research, it is best to print it up or take a screenshot of your article and save it to your computer or the cloud or even share the article with other family members. Be sure to include the URL in case you need to access an archived version through the Wayback Machine.

If you come across the “page not found” message, be sure and try the Wayback Machine to find an archive of the page you need. If you don’t have the URL, you can still do a keyword search and find the information that you need. No more lost information!

Naming Patterns

Many times, during our genealogy research we come across the use of several names over and over making it difficult to keep the families separate. For instance, in England, you may find half the boys named John, William, or Thomas and half the girls named Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, or Ann. It is not uncommon to find ancestors with several grandchildren with the same name. Lucky are those whose ancestors used unusual names and passed those names down from generation to generation. It was the tradition in many families to give their children the names of other family members, usually in a specific order. This tradition is called naming patterns and is a significant help in our research.

British Naming Conventions from FamilySearch Wiki gives the following example for British naming patterns:

• The first son was named after the paternal grandfather
• The second son was named after the maternal grandfather
• The third son was named after the father
• The fourth son was named after the oldest paternal uncle
• The fifth was named after the second oldest paternal uncle or the oldest maternal uncle

• The first daughter was named after the maternal grandmother
• The second daughter was named after the paternal grandmother
• The third daughter was named after the mother
• The fourth daughter was named after the oldest maternal aunt
• The fifth was named after the second oldest maternal aunt or the oldest paternal aunt

If there was duplication (for example, the paternal grandfather and the father had the same name), then the family moved to the next position on the list.

Many other countries used naming patterns also. FamilySearch Wiki and Google are a good place to search for these lists. It was also common in many countries to use the name of a child that had died for the next child. At first glance, it would seem that the couple named two of their children the same name. When you see this pattern, it is a good heads-up to look at the death records for the death of the first child.

Naming patterns are not absolute. Many used these patterns but not all. Lucky is the researcher whose ancestors used these patterns. But be careful and use naming patterns as a guide because they are not a set of rules that all followed. Given names may be the clue you need to move back to the next generation.

Cyndi’s List

Could you imagine going into a library and finding the books in utter chaos? There’s no card catalog even to look through to locate the book you need. Your visit to the library would be a waste of time. In a way, this resembles the organization of genealogy resources on the internet. Where is what and who has what can be frustrating when researching your ancestors. Not all information is available on FamilySearch, Ancestry, Findmypast, and MyHeritage. Thanks to the hard work of Cyndi Ingle we have a “card catalog” of genealogical internet links organized into subjects making it easier to find the sources that you need.

Cyndi has gathered (at latest count) 336,769 links and has organized them into 220 categories. She receives almost 300 emails daily to categorize. Cyndi’s List (www.cyndislist.com) is a free website. She calls it “your genealogical portal onto the internet.”

She has very easy to understand categories. Cyndi has alphabetized the categories with the U.S. states being listed under the United States and not by their specific name. It is the same with all the countries. You need to go to the country and then find the area you would like to research.

One of the more interesting categories is Outer Space. There are two subcategories under Outer Space: Astronauts and General Resources. Under Astronauts, you find links to biographies and information on U.S. Astronauts. The General Resource section takes you to the “Alien Spaceship Theory of Genealogy,” It even links you to Fold3’s section on government investigations of UFO’s. Maybe one of the investigations involved an ancestor of yours! You can also find the Skywalker Family Tree from the Star War movies.

On a more serious note, for instance, if you search the category for Quakers, Cyndi’s List will link you to sites where you can find vital records, cemeteries, meeting records and much more. It even takes you to how-to guides if you are not sure how to research your Quaker family. If you are researching a U.S. state such as Ohio, there are 5,929 links relating to Ohio research. What a goldmine of information.

Cyndi’s List is a great resource to point you to internet sites that will help you answer your research questions and should be your starting point in your genealogical research. Give Cyndi’s List a try and see what you can discover about your ancestors.

Utah Pioneers

“They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” — Banksy.

Is this a fear that our ancestors now realize? Will those who have sacrificed all so that we live comfortably be forgotten and lost from memory too? Will their stories vanish, and their names never mentioned again? Forgetting our ancestors will happen unless we try to keep their memories alive and gratitude in our hearts for giving their all for us, their posterity.

There are several organizations whose goal is to keep these memories alive. One is the Daughters of Utah Pioneers (DUP). DUP is “dedicated to honoring the names and achievements of the men, women, and children who founded Utah.” DUP maintains a collection of over 42,000 pioneer histories. They consider an ancestor a pioneer if they came to the Utah Territory, died crossing the plains, or was born before May 10, 1869, when the railroad came to the territory.

DUP also has a fabulous website, isdup.org. On this website, they have links to indexes of histories and photos. These indexes are valuable to see if DUP has information on your ancestors. You can order a history from their website. To request a history, you must either be a member of DUP or a direct descendant of pioneers. You will need to send a copy of your pedigree chart and highlight ALL the names for which you want histories. Some pioneers have multiple histories. The histories cost 25 cents per page with a minimum of $1.00. They will contact you about the cost of your order before they send it to you. They also have a Photo tab. Under this tab is an index for the photos they have in their collection. Photos are sent on a CD and cost $5.00 an image. You can also get copies of the histories and photos by going to the Daughters of Utah Pioneers main museum in Salt Lake City, Utah at 300 N. Main St. At the museum you can see the histories and photos firsthand.

As the Daughters of Utah Pioneers theme song goes “And we’ll love them more and more, as we read their history o’er.” We are who we are because they were who they were. Let us not let our ancestors die the death of being forgotten.

One Name Study

Unique surnames can be a curse or a blessing. In genealogy, they can be easier to trace, but they are misspelled easily because the name is unfamiliar to those writing it. Many genealogists take these unique surnames and create what is becoming more popular- a one-name study.

A one-name study is a study of a particular surname without following a pedigree. The focus is on collecting all the information available on that one surname. It is following that surname as it occurs throughout history. The one-name study includes the variants of the surname and its frequency. Others may focus on this specific surname in certain geographical location.

If you have hit a brick wall, a one-name study may help you break through that wall. Collecting all the data available on your brick wall surname may help you find the connection you need to go back farther. It will help you find family immigration and emigration that you may have missed. It may also help you find others who are searching this same name and through those connections find the information that you need.

There are the Guild of One-Name Studies (one-name.org) and The Surname Society (surname-society.org) that have a collection of one-name studies. You can check these groups out to see if they have registered your surname with that group. The names are recorded by their original spellings so if the surname you wish to follow is variant of that spelling you will still have to search by the primary spelling. If you find that the specific surname that you are researching is listed, you can contact the researcher of that surname, and they may have the information that will help you in your searching. When approaching the surname researcher be sure and include as much information on the surname that interests you. Your contact information should include locations, dates, and variations of the specific surname whose information you are requesting.

If the surname you wish to study is not registered, this is a fantastic opportunity for you to register this surname and do the research for that name. Investigating a surname and its occurrences throughout history are challenging but also rewarding. By registering and researching a particular surname, you may not only help yourself but others who may need the information you find to break through their brick walls. Is there a one-name study in your future?