Dear Listers: I think it must be time to issue a reminder, so here it is. Helpful Tips to Follow For Posting to the List: 1. Properly fill out your subject line. The subject line should ONLY show the YEAR / COUNTY / SURNAME of the person for whom you are requesting a lookup. If you are looking for John Smith in Chester County in 1850, your subject line should show: 1850/CHESTER/SMITH. This is very important - many volunteers will not open an email that has an unclear subject line. Also, every post is archived at Rootsweb; a proper subject line makes the archived messages easy to browse and search. 2. Next, in the message body, put ALL of the info that you know or surmise on this person. That includes names/approx. ages of spouse, children; any clues to precise location; occupation (if known or suspected), etc. All of these are clues to help our lookup volunteers narrow down a search. Looking back through time, there is no such thing as an unusual name - even if your ancestor was named Ziggy Zeldow, it's highly likely there was more than one in this country. The additional info helps us figure out if we've found the right one. 3. If the surname is one of foreign origin, include HOW IT SOUNDS. This will help us to figure out different spellings to try. One surname I encountered recently is a good example: Thibault - it is pronounced Teabow. You should remember that in past years not everyone was terribly literate.....so we have a census taker hearing a spoken name and writing it down as it sounds; then we have their spelling ability to take into consideration! Plus then we have to factor in the eyes of the person who transcribed the census into a digital format, trying to read old handwriting that is often very faint. 4. Everyone should search out list archives - it is very possible that someone else has already requested a lookup on your ancestor (if you go back far enough, almost all of us are related in some way!). Go to www.rootsweb.com Under Mailing Lists, select Interactive Search. In the box, type pa-census-lookup and then enter in the next search box, type in the surname you are interested in - you will get a list of all previous list messages relative to that surname. If instead you click on Threaded Archives, you will be able to browse all of the messages that have been posted. This list has been in existence for (I think) about seven years...that's a lot of lookups! 5. Please note that contacting our lookup volunteers "off list" (privately) is a "no no" - our volunteers do lookups AS AND WHEN they can, and contacting them privately puts undue pressure on them. Enough pressure and they will simply stop doing lookups. Please remember that those who volunteer are just other listmembers - just like you - who kindly decide to give others a helping hand when they can - they are NOT obligated to answer your posts. Any volunteer who receives off list posts is encouraged to either ignore them or merely reply "please post to the list." 6. If you post a query and get a response and want to expand on that line, you should: go to the response message you received and forward it to the list with the additional request you want. This is helpful because that message will include ALL of the info previously asked and found on this person. You just can't expect a lookup volunteer to remember what you asked or the response that was posted even from yesterday - there's just too much to remember! If you wish to expand on a query, you must include all of the previous information so we'll have it all to look at - we won't be able to remember what someone posted in the past. 7. Last, but not least, if you have any problems, contact me. I will do what I can to solve the problem. That's all I can think of right now! Here is a listing of helpful web sites for all our "newbies": www.ancestry.com - while a good portion of this site is pay only, there is still a good bit of free data there http://www.key-net.net/users/oron/palinksfr.htm - Brenda's Guide to PA Genealogy Links - focuses mostly on Berks County http://www.rootsweb.com/~uslookup/ A census lookup site - has many volunteers http://www.pa-roots.com/~chester/ - Chester Co., PA genealogy site www.cyndislist.com - Cyndi's List - tons of information www.delcohistory.org - Delaware Co., PA information, including The History of Delaware County, online and searchable! www.ellisislandrecords.org - Immigration records from Ellis Island www.familyhistory.com - sponsored by Ancestry - message boards and world tree search engine www.familysearch.org - the web site of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) - searchable www.familytreemaker.com - site sponsored by FamilyTreeMaker software - some information but much of it is only indices of information you can get by buying a CD http://www.midatlanticarchives.com/ - Alan Buckingham's web site - lots of good, old info http://www.genealogysearchengines.com/ A genealogy search engine www.geneanet.org home of Geneanet www.genforum.com home of GenForum - lots of message boards or surname forums - good Chat feature www.gengateway.com home of GenGateway www.genswap.com site for swapping genealogy information www.kindredkonnections.com home of Kindred Konnections - although it is a pay site, you can "earn" research time by transcribing a scanned document (about 2 min. of transcribing earns you 1 hr of searching) www.genuki.org.uk - home of Genuki - genealogy information from the UK (England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland) http://olivetreegenealogy.com/index.shtml The Olive Tree genealogy - lots of ship lists www.usgenweb.org US GenWeb site, has sites for individual states as well as some specific projects - terrific! ALSO - don't forget - you can use a regular search engine (like AltaVista) to search for "tidbits" - for this search engine, if you want to search for more than one word at a time, put the words in quotes (" "). For example, the person looking for info on Allegheny County, PA could go to such a search engine, type in "Allegheny County, PA" +genealogy (the +genealogy further defines the search) and a long list will come up of sites that contain the words "allegheny county, pa" and the word genealogy. ==== PA-CENSUS-LOOKUP Mailing List ==== #5) Please send any questions or concerns to the list administrator at [email protected] This list is not to be used for generalized surname research purposes. ============================== Search the US Census Collection. Over 140 million records added in the last 12 months. Largest online collection in the world. Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13965/rd.ashx