Received this information from a fellow society...interesting... Pam Swiler, President Ionia County Genealogical Society >Dear fellow genealogical/historical society, > >Edward Rosenbaum and Stephen Morse are pleased to announce their >collaborative effort to make searching the Ellis Island Database even easier. > >Morse's free 'Searching the Ellis Island Database in One Step' website at >http://sites.netscape.net/stephenpmorse/ellis.html offers a solution to >one of the problems with the Ellis Island database... the inability to >enter all of your information in one place. In addition to being able to >specify the name of your ancestor, Morse's page lets you easily include >the age, year of arrival, gender, first name, ship, ethnicity, and the >port of departure. It also allows you to search in ways that are not >otherwise possible -- such as by entering only the first letter of the >last name. Furthermore the Ellis Island website restricts the allowable >choices of ports/ships/ethnicities based on the name or partial name you >enter whereas Morse's page doesn't. > >Edward Rosenbaum's shareware program 'Ellis Island Database Name >Permutations', available at >http://members.bellatlantic.net/~elr228/eidb.htm, offers you possible >alternate spellings to use in searching for your ancestor. These >alternate spellings are based upon letters that were easily confused with >each other when the Ellis Island Database was created, as well as >alternate spellings based upon the American Soundex code, and the >Daitch-Mokotoff soundex code. Rosenbaum's program also allows you to >specify your ancestors age, year of arrival, gender, first name, and >ship. In addition, the program will create a customized web page for you >that contains links to search the Ellis Island database for each alternate >spelling. > >And now these two powerful search tools can be used in conjunction with >each other. From Rosenbaum's program you can specify that the customized >web page contains links to Morse's website instead of the Ellis Island >website. By doing so you get all the power of the alternate spellings >provided by Rosenbaum together with the versatile searching abilities >provided by Morse. > > >Sincerely, >Edward Rosenbaum >President, JGS of Bergen County, New Jersey >(http://www.crosswinds.nett/~erosenbaum/jgsbc)