Genealogy Path

The following article is from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author. Information about the newsletter is available at http://www.eogn.com.

Here is a trick for anyone who uses Google’s Gmail service:

Here’s a method of creating unlimited virtual addresses to make it easier to sort mail and identify spam. For example, you can create a separate email address for each account you establish with an online merchant, such as amazon or ebay or ancestry.com. It even works for this newsletter. As long as you set up a “catchall” address with your email provider, all of these will be forwarded to your main account, and you can use your email client to sort and filter these as you see fit.

You can do this with Gmail, without having to pay to set up your own domain or deal with mail servers. Just add a plus sign and any text you want after your address but prior to the “at sign.” Gmail will ignore anything from the plus sign forward and send the message to your normal Gmail account. You can then use Gmail’s filters to sort your mail based on these suffixes.

Let’s create a few examples. First, let’s assume that your e-mail address is myname@gmail.com.

Substitute your real Gmail address in place of myname@gmail.com.

You might be suspicious that some merchants are sharing your e-mail address with others, such as giving your address to spammers. You can create “special addresses” for each merchant: you might create myname+ancestry@gmail.com and use that address only when signing up for Ancestry.com services. In a similar manner, you might create myname+facebook@gmail.com when signing up for Facebook. You could sign up with Twitter by using an e-mail address of myname+twitter@gmail.com.

That’s all there is to it: in front of the “at sign” simply insert a plus sign followed by anything you want (no spaces or “funny punctuation.”)

You will receive the e-mail in your normal Gmail account, as always. However, when you receive a “spammy” message, you will know how they got your e-mail address. You can see that the message was sent to myname+facebook@gmail.com which reveals that the sender obtained your e-mail address from Facebook.

You can also invoke Gmail’s filters to create a new rule to automatically move all future incoming messages sent to that full address to the Trash.

Simple… and it works.

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A civil war hero, a pirate, an African tribe, or an Indian Princess all of these people of the past could be in your family tree. For those who know all about where their family comes from or has a written history, you are very lucky. The truth is, that most people only have an idea of where their ancestors came from and don’t know much about any of them. Knowing where your ancestors came from and who they were is a great way to help you learn more about your family tree and some of the hereditary conditions that you might face later in life. No matter if you are interested in genealogy or not, then the time has never been better for you to search out your long-lost ancestors. Due to the popularity of genealogy sites on the Internet, you can find all your ancestors and family without leaving your home.

Before the Internet, people who wanted to research genealogy had to go down to the library and spend hours upon hours of sifting through old microfiche forms and old newspapers to find traces of their ancestors and family tree. They would listen to the stories that their parents and grandparents told and then see if they could find any trace of those people in death records, birth records, and land records. It was a long and tedious process that most gave up on pretty fast.

But, now, you can search out your family tree from generations past by sitting at home in your spare time. There are thousands of great websites out there who can help you search through millions of databases that will help you find your relatives, no matter where they are or where they came from. You can search through: the death records, birth records, land records, marriage records, ship logs, immigration logs, and even through personal records that have been kept by millions of people. These great searches can turn those long hours of work into a few short minutes to find every branch in your family tree.

Some sites are free, and some are pay sites, so you should look at each one carefully before agreeing to any type of fee. You need to know if they are free, and if not, do they charge per search or as a monthly membership fee. So, it doesn’t matter how much you do or don’t spend on these sites if you are finding the information that you need. If you find that you cannot get any information, you can always email their support department for help or tips on what you might be doing wrong. Most of these web sites offer great email support to help you find your whole family tree.

So, if you want to know about your past, the best way to do it is to get into genealogy and seek out your ancestors. Search around several different Internet sites and see what you can find, no matter what, you will always find something interesting that you didn’t know before. Who knows, you might find a long-lost member of royalty or a great hero in your past!

Jerry Cahill authors articles related to personal family trees. He publishes an interesting website on family genealogy related topics at: http://www.familygenealogytreesite.com/

Tags: family research, genealogy research, online research, research
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