HI List This is from another list. Thought it would be of interest!!!! Yours in genealogy, Joanne GENEALOGISTS INUNDATE ELLIS ISLAND WEB SITE by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG [email protected] The Mississippi River is not the only flooded area in the United States right now. So is the recently opened Ellis Island Web site http://www.ellisislandrecords.org/. It sank under an estimated 10 million hits per day since it was opened to the public on April 17. Many ROOTSWEB REVIEW and MISSING LINKS readers visited the site only to see the message: "Thank you for your interest in the American Family Immigration History Center. Due to an extraordinary number of visitors, we must limit access to the site. Please keep trying, or check back later." Seasoned genealogists are not surprised about the popularity of the site; after all, it is estimated that 40 percent of the U.S. population today can trace back to one or more ancestors who came through the Port of New York. The site is a joint effort by the U.S. Park Service, the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It offers a searchable records database with 22 million names, covering 71 percent of the immigrants who came through Ellis Island between 1 January 1892, when Ellis Island opened, and December 1924. However, the Web-hosting firm that handles the site's hardware was astounded at the tidal wave. Its 50-person Hostcentric team worked like levee sandbaggers around the clock to add more servers in order to meet the demand. The system was designed originally to limit the site's usage to 20,000 concurrent users. The process of extracting these records started in 1993 when the church began the volunteer effort of digitizing them. The process was completed in late 2000. It took 12,000 volunteer church members from 2,700 congregations in the U.S. and Canada approximately 5.6 million hours to complete the entries. The church also devoted 100 full-time volunteers to work on the project. They compared the original microfilms to extracted data and made corrections as needed. The names were taken from the microfilm of New York passenger arrival manifests. They include aliens, U.S. citizens, crew members, nonimmigrant aliens, deportees, and those who literally missed the boat. Information usually includes: traveler names, name of vessel, ports of departure, ports of arrival, and dates of arrival. Other recorded information pertains to age, sex, marital status, nationality, name of relative or friend outside the United States, name of relative inside the U.S., exact birth date, and place of birth. An average of 15 information columns were used in the early years of Ellis Island, while up to 36 columns of facts were collected in the later years. The painstaking work performed by the church's volunteers included deciphering almost impossible-to-read microfilms and photocopies. They scrutinized century-old handwriting, and hand- copied and typed isolated pieces of information that were originally recorded by multiple scribes, who took it down from people of different nationalities speaking different languages. "This was a fairly sizeable project," says Wayne J. Metcalfe, director of the Field Services and Support Division of the Family and Church History Department. Sizeable is right. If stacked flat, the 3,678 boxes of microfilms examined by these volunteers would exceed three times the height of the Statue of Liberty, from the hem of her robe to the top of her torch. The church originally purchased microfilm copies of the passenger lists from the National Archives. "This seven-year project tested the persistence and best extraction skills of our church-member volunteers but was most certainly worth the effort," says Metcalfe. "The end result is a database which will allow as many as 100 million living descendants of U.S. immigrants to find information about their ancestors or confirm their ancestors' first steps on the land of their hopes and dreams." Of course, first the technicians have to finish with the sandbagging so you can access the site. Use of FamilySearch.org, which was launched by the church on 24 May 1999, far exceeded predications also, with an average of approximately 9 million hits per day and more than 5 billion hits total. You can read stories about some who have been successful in accessing the Ellis Island site, and in the meanwhile, keep on trying, particularly in non-peak hours. Finding Grandma Cel http://www.msnbc.com/news/561331.asp Tracing Roots Online: Ellis Island's Arrivals List http://www.iht.com/articles/17194.html Surfing Ellis Island's Immigration Records http://www.ekathimerini.com/news/content.asp?aid=79050 * * * * * WEB LINKS LIBERATION CHILDREN is a non-profit, self-help organization founded in 1985 to assist individuals fathered by members of the Allied forces that liberated The Netherlands after WWII in the search for their fathers in their countries of origin. Liberation Children seeks volunteers who know about genealogy and research, especially in the U.S.A. and Ireland. For more information, e-mail [email protected] or visit http://liberation-children.wolweb.nl For a treasure trove of information about Holland during WWII http://www-lib.usc.edu/~anthonya/war/main.htm OLD PHOTOGRAPHS LOOKING FOR HOMES. Register unknown photographs. Also see the database of old postcards at the largest genealogy site in Europe http://www.geneanet.com/, recommends Cheryl Mann, newsletter editor of the Dallas (Texas) Genealogical Society. http://portraits.geneanet.org/ PENNSYLVANIA, Jefferson County genealogy and history. http://Jeffersonlines.homestead.com/index.html POMERANIAN LIVE CHAT. Every Saturday at 3 p.m. (New York time); chat rooms have instant language translation in six languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Choose the language in which you wish to type and the language in which you wish to receive messages, and you can instantly communicate with people who speak a different language. http://www.donicht.de/english/screeneng.htm THE ROMAN ARMY IN BRITAIN. Its fortresses, forts, watchtowers, temporary camps, depots and industrial sites, built over 400 years, with photographs and other background material on the army and the military history of Britannia. [Have your editors told you about their trip to England several years ago, driving around (and around and around) using a third-century Roman map? Good thing we spoke the language, or we'd still be there somewhere on the Salisbury Plain.] http://www.morgue.demon.co.uk/Britannia.html SCOTS AT WAR. http://www-saw.arts.ed.ac.uk/ CEMETERY LINKS: DURNBACH WAR CEMETERY, GERMANY by Mandy Pemberton [email protected] A cousin of mine was shot down over Stuttgart during WWII whilst serving with the 106 Squadron. All on board were killed. I am still trying to chase relatives of other members of the crew who were: Sgt L. L. PEACE (son of George and Florrie PEACE of Canada) Sgt J. NEWLANDS (son of Maria NEWLANDS of Ayr, Scotland) FO A. CLARKSON (son of Samuel and Mary CLARKSON of Scotland) Sgt J. MORRISON (son of Joshua and Sarah MORRISON of Lancashire) Sgt J. McGHIE (relatives unknown) Sgt J. BOWLEY (son of Jarvis and Gertrude BOWLEY of Yorkshire) My great-aunt visited the cemetery in the early 1950s and I have a copy of both the entrance to the cemetery and a copy of the memorial plaque on which her son was mentioned. These names are: 1520585 Sgt J. NEWLANDS 1801172 Sgt K. E. NOTTAGE 524666 Sgt L. PEACE AUST 418170 FO L. L. PEMBERTON J26681 FO H. H. REID RCAF Should anybody be interested in obtaining a copy of either of these photos, please let me know. o THE GREAT WAR [inscribed beneath names] "In Loving Memory of Our Sons who Fell at Ayr March 1918 During Aerial Manoeuvres" 1st. LIEUTENANTS U.S.A. Andrew Carl ORTMAYER 1886 - 1918 from Chicago Thomas Cushman NATHAN 1897 - 1918 from Boston ENSIGNS U.S.N. Fredrick William HOUGH 1894 - 1918 from Chicago Harry Glen VELIE 1893 - 1918 from Chicago I have photographs of this memorial located in Ayr Cemetery, Scotland. Are there any relatives who would like to have them? John Parker [email protected] CALL FOR ARTICLES, STORIES. MISSING LINKS welcomes articles about genealogical research methods and sources from all parts of the world. MISSING LINKS also welcomes delightful, amusing, amazing, cautionary, or otherwise wonderful and educational tales of genealogical research for the "Successful Links" section and articles acknowledging the efforts of particularly helpful librarians, archivists, town or county clerks, and other frequently unsung heroes, for publication in the "Virtual Bouquets" section. Please send articles and stories for consideration for publication as plain text e-mail messages (no HTML or attachments) to [email protected] PERMISSION TO REPRINT articles from MISSING LINKS is granted unless specifically stated otherwise, PROVIDED: (1) the reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes; and (2) the following notice appears at the end of the article: Written by [author's name, e-mail address, and URL, if given]. Previously published by Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG, Missing Links, Vol. 6, No. 17, 25 April 2001. RootsWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/ BACK ISSUES of MISSING LINKS AND ROOTSWEB REVIEW are fully SEARCHABLE. Search all or download a specific issue by following the links at http://e-zine.rootsweb.com/ ______________________________