are also people online who want to sell you
research services, family crests and other
products. “If that’s not what you are looking
for, ignore them,” she advises.
Elle did purchase several old, interesting
news clippings that featured relatives and also
bought a copy of a birth certificate of a relative
who lived in England. “We had a gap in the fam-
ily tree and found a birth certificate that indi-
cated she died giving birth. It was worth paying
for a copy of the birth certificate,” she says.
As much as Elle has relished the historical
connections she has made, perhaps her great-
est find has been Glenn’s fifth cousins. She
e-mailed a genealogy inquiry to a records
archivist who put her in touch with someone
doing research on similar names—a fifth
cousin Glenn had never met. It turned out that
the cousin lives in Thunder Bay, two blocks
away from the Andra-Warners.
“It’s fascinating where you can go,” says
Elle. “Who knows how far from home, or
close to home, your genealogy adventure will
take you!”C take you!”
Start your
search online
Freelancer Paul Lima can be reached online at
www.paullima.com.
n
THERE ARE MANY genealogical Web sites,
as an Internet search will quickly show.
Selecting the right ones to use depends on
where your relatives were born, lived and
died. Here are a number of popular and
effective genealogy Web sites that will help
get you started on your family tree sleuthing:
■
www.1930census.com—general
reference for the U.S. Federal Census
■
www.archives.gov—the National Archives
and Records Administration
■
www.familysearch.org—Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints genealogy
records and resources
■
www.ellisisland.org—the American
Family Immigration History Center at
Ellis Island; site includes genealogy and
passenger search tabs
■
www.shipslist.com—contains the Ellis
Island database of U.S. immigrants
■
www.immigrantships.net—volunteers
focused on transcribing passenger arrival
records and publishing work online
■
www.loc.gov—online home of the Library
of Congress
■
www.myfamilyinc.com—includes
Genealogy.com and Ancestry.com, with
more than 7 billion names and 26,000
searchable databases
■
www.rootsweb.com—conduct a variety
of searches and meet people conducting
similar research on message boards; part
of Ancestry.com
■
www.usgenweb.com—a group of volunteers
working together to provide links to Web
sites for genealogical research in every
U.S. county
■
www.ancestry.ca—offers a large number
of Canadian family-history records online
■
www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/genealogy/
index-e.html—Library and Archives Canada,
with excellent advice for beginners
■
www.ourroots.ca—history books about
pioneer towns and profiles of citizens
■
www.pier21.ca—Canada’s equivalent to
Ellis Island
■
www.freebmd.org.uk—British ancestry
site with parish birth, marriage and death
certificates from 1837 on
■
www.genuki.org.uk—census figures from
every county of England, Ireland, Wales,
Scotland, the Channel Islands and the Isle
of Man, and other resources.—PL
Talk to me
FROM DOCUMENTING a daughter telling her mother, a cancer nurse, that she’s an
angel on earth, to capturing colleagues talking about rescuing suicide jumpers on the
Golden Gate Bridge, the nonprofit project
StoryCorps promotes and encourages family and friends to both talk and listen.
Documentary producer Dave Isay
founded the Brooklyn-based StoryCorps
(
www.storycorps.org) in 2003. It began as a
lone booth in Grand Central Terminal in
New York City where two people could sit
down and talk for 40 minutes about whatever they wanted and walk out with a CD
recording of their conversation. The program now has a national scope, with permanent booths in San Francisco and
Atlanta, mobile units that have traveled to
all 50 states and weekly broadcasts of two-minute segments on the StoryCorps Web
site and National Public Radio.
“StoryCorps tells people that they matter and won’t be forgotten,” says Costco
member Heather Burke, the program’s deputy director of development. She adds that
more than 27,000 interviews have been
conducted. Copies of the interviews are
archived at the Library of Congress’
American Folklife Center.
In addition to gathering the stories of
everyday people, StoryCorps has a few
specialized initiatives, including plans to
ROBER T LO WELL
StoryCorps helps immortalize
everyday people by allowing
them to share their stories with
each other and with the world.
honor the stories of September 11, of those
with memory loss and of African-Americans
and Latinos.
“Everyday people are the real celebrities,”
says Frank Kingman, a Costco member and
facilitator at the San Francisco StoryCorps
booth. “It’s a validating thing to know people
are listening.”
His job is to help out with the equipment,
help people feel comfortable and even be
the one asking questions if someone shows
up alone.
“I have to be really brave sometimes when
I’m there,” says Kingman, who says a box of
tissues is kept on the table in the booth. “It’s
very emotional.”
People don’t have to wait for a mobile
unit to show up in their hometown to sit
down and talk with family and friends.
StoryCorps has named the Friday after
Thanksgiving as the National Day of Listening
(
www.nationaldayoflistening.org). This year
marks the second annual event, and the Web
site includes a Do-It-Yourself Guide ( www.
storycorps.org/diy/) to help people record and
archive stories at home or in the classroom.
For those who are intrigued by the idea
but feel they need help figuring out what to
ask, the StoryCorps Web site has a list of suggestions to get conversation flowing.
Questions cover everything from love and
school to illness and family heritage.
Regardless of what questions the “
interviewer” has in mind, Burke recommends
“letting the conversation go where it will.”
She tells The Connection that she’s heard from
several people who didn’t expect the conversation to take the path it did.
Kingman agrees, and adds that he particularly enjoys the times when he hears
about conversations between two people
who’ve known each other for years that result
in one of them saying, “I never knew that.”
