Rootsweb - important URL - visit and learn a bit about our sponsor of these lists and thousands of others! http://www.rootsweb.com/ ------------- What is RSL? I. WHAT IS THE RSL AND HOW IS IT USED? The RootsWeb Surname List (RSL) is a list or registry of surnames (at the time I write this, there are more than 600,000 surnames that have been submitted by more than 75,000 net.genealogists, with additional names arriving at the rate of more 700 a day). Associated with each surname are dates and locations, and information about how to contact the person who submitted the surname. If you are researching a family with the same surname, in the same area and similar time frame, then you might find it useful to contact the person who submitted the surname to share and compare notes. Do be realistic: If you're researching Woodbury in Alabama in the 1800s, a person with info on the Woodbury family of England in the 1600s isn't likely to be of much help. I mention this because some submitters have withdrawn their data from the RSL due to the flood of e-mail they've received, much of it as off target as the example I just gave. What does it cost? There is no charge to participate, although RootsWeb, the major sponsor of this effort, does accept voluntary contributions. If you find the RSL useful and would like to support it financially, please please visit http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/how-to-subscribe.html for information. (Really, we do need and appreciate your support! It's amazing how this beast is eating computer cycles and bandwidth.) If you'd like to have your surnames included in the RSL, there is a submission form on the web at http://rsl.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/rslsql.cgi Alternatively, data may be submitted by e-mail. Directions on how to do so are included in Section III If you see a surname listed that interests you, especially if there is a good match on dates and locations, contact the person who submitted the surname. If you're accessing the RSL via the interactive search on the web, all you need to do to learn how to contact the submitter is to select their nametag, listed at the end of each surname entry. Otherwise, you'll need to order the individual address from the mailserver, as described in Section II. All the addresses listed are fairly current (verified within the last twelve months) and the best we currently have on file. There's no need to contact us about a bad address; if the submitter doesn't resurface with a valid address before the annual verification process, their data will be dropped from the list. Because of all the data scrubbing involved, the web-searchable RSL is currently only updated once a month, on the first Sunday of the month. (We're exploring ways to update it more frequently without going nuts. Please be patient!) Starting the next day, the new surnames are posted to rsl-update (an Internet genealogy mailing list -- to subscribe, just send the message "subscribe" (without the quotation marks) to rsl-update-request@rootsweb.com) and to soc.genealogy.surnames.global (the USENET genealogy newsgroup devoted to surnames) and alt.genealogy (a general purpose genealogy newsgroup). The first day, the new A surnames are posted, the second day the new B surnames, etc. (The full RSL is simply too large to be posted in such a manner.) The databases accessible via e-mail are typically updated a few days later. http://rsl.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/rslsql.cgi