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And - in 1995 genealogy on the internet took a giant step forward when two events occurred. <br>In early 1995, Larry Stephens, a family historian with the University of Indiana, was on a genealogy email list for KY. He was impressed with the list and wanted one like it for his state of interest, Indiana. Receiving permission to use the university's email server he set up the IN list. At the time, email lists weren't free and the number of messages that could be sent was very limited, but this wasn't the case for Larry's lists. As people heard about the IN list Larry started receiving requests to set up lists for other states and areas. Before long hundreds of email lists were being run, under Larry's direction, on the university's server. Through Larry's lists hundreds of family historians joined the on-line genealogy community. <br>In late 1995 Jeff Murphy, a family historian, uploaded a website for Muhlenberg County, KY and announced it on the KY email list. The people on the KY list were delighted at the prospect of websites with genealogy information and the list buzzed with excitement. It wasn't long before questions began to be asked about websites for the other KY counties, and people began to think that if Jeff could put a county website on-line, they could too. However, the majority of the people on the KY list didn't have a clue about putting together a website or writing html code. To answer this need Jeff put together a shell site and freely offered it to anyone who wanted to put a KY county site on-line. Jeff's offer was snapped up and by early 1996 most of the counties of KY had a website on-line. To bring some organization to the rapidly expanding KY sites Jeff put together a website for the state of KY and linked to all the KY county sites. <br>The news of the KY websites traveled like wildfire to other lists and the question of whether other states would become available became the topic of the day. The answer wasn't long in coming.<br>Bill Couch was on the KY list and his main interest was in the state of AR. Bill followed Jeff's example and in May 1996 uploaded an AR state site and a site for every AR county. It didn't take long before volunteers stepped forward to adopt an AR county site. | And - in 1995 genealogy on the internet took a giant step forward when two events occurred. <br>In early 1995, Larry Stephens, a family historian with the University of Indiana, was on a genealogy email list for KY. He was impressed with the list and wanted one like it for his state of interest, Indiana. Receiving permission to use the university's email server he set up the IN list. At the time, email lists weren't free and the number of messages that could be sent was very limited, but this wasn't the case for Larry's lists. As people heard about the IN list Larry started receiving requests to set up lists for other states and areas. Before long hundreds of email lists were being run, under Larry's direction, on the university's server. Through Larry's lists hundreds of family historians joined the on-line genealogy community. <br>In late 1995 Jeff Murphy, a family historian, uploaded a website for Muhlenberg County, KY and announced it on the KY email list. The people on the KY list were delighted at the prospect of websites with genealogy information and the list buzzed with excitement. It wasn't long before questions began to be asked about websites for the other KY counties, and people began to think that if Jeff could put a county website on-line, they could too. However, the majority of the people on the KY list didn't have a clue about putting together a website or writing html code. To answer this need Jeff put together a shell site and freely offered it to anyone who wanted to put a KY county site on-line. Jeff's offer was snapped up and by early 1996 most of the counties of KY had a website on-line. To bring some organization to the rapidly expanding KY sites Jeff put together a website for the state of KY and linked to all the KY county sites. <br>The news of the KY websites traveled like wildfire to other lists and the question of whether other states would become available became the topic of the day. The answer wasn't long in coming.<br>Bill Couch was on the KY list and his main interest was in the state of AR. Bill followed Jeff's example and in May 1996 uploaded an AR state site and a site for every AR county. It didn't take long before volunteers stepped forward to adopt an AR county site. | ||
=== THE BIRTH OF USGenWeb === | === THE BIRTH OF The USGenWeb Project<br> === | ||
We family historians have long been used to zeroing in on a county to find information on our ancestors so the whole idea of websites devoted to genealogy for a county was exciting. During late May and early June of 1996, Jeff, Bill and a few other people kicked around the whole idea of state and county sites and out of those conversations the concept of the USGenWeb was born: a web of inter-connected genealogy sites - a site for every state in the U.S. with each state site linking to all the counties (parishes or townships) within the state and to tie the whole thing together, a national site with links to all the state sites. Since it was to be a web of genealogy sites it would be named "US GenWeb." The name had to be changed to USGenWeb because US GenWeb was a copyright violation. The words "The" and "Project" weren't added until later. <br>Concept to realization took place in less than 15 days. The announcement of USGenWeb was made on Jun 16, 1996 and volunteers rushed to adopt the proposed new state sites. On Jun 18, 1996, Dale Schneider set up an email list on his personal server and subbed 18 people to the list. Those 18 people became the first state coordinators and not a one knew the first thing about webpages or html. John Rigdon designed a shell county site and Jeff a state shell site. John also wrote the necessary code for a query site and placed it on-line. The volunteers, using the basic shell and a minimal amount of html coding, added links to the query site and whatever small amount of genealogy information was found on the web and uploaded the sites.<br>By June 20th twenty state sites were either on-line or ready to be uploaded with eleven more "in the works." The national site had been placed on-line around June 15th. As each state was uploaded Jeff added a link to the new state's site. The new state coordinators began looking for volunteers to take over the county sites. It didn't take long before the USGenWeb's first major problem was encountered. Money.<br>Free server space was rare and many people who wanted to adopt sites couldn't afford to pay for server space. Although Dale Schneider was willing to host the new sites on his personal server he couldn't afford to do it for free. Fund raising suggestions were made, but for most people on the list freely sharing genealogy information was a way of life. Another way needed to be found and that "way" turned out to be RootsWeb. <br>When first approached by Jeff, some misunderstanding or miscommunication occurred, and RootsWeb wasn't willing to host the USGenWeb sites, but that was quickly cleared up. RootsWeb offered to host the USGenWeb sites on its servers for free with no limit on the amount of space for a site. With RootsWeb making server space available for free, volunteers could afford to take on a Project site and by the end of June or very early July 1996 there was a website for every state and county on-line - ready to welcome visitors. The state coordinators were responsible for finding volunteers to man the county sites and by the end of 1996 70% of the county sites were adopted by volunteers.<br>During June while all of this was going on, one of the people on the list was Linda Lewis and she was interested in a place to put all the bits and pieces and scraps of information the average family historian squirrels away "just in case." Joy Fisher, also on the list, was concerned about the future changes of html and web browsers since both things had changed so rapidly in such a short period of time. Joy already had on-line some books she had transcribed and they were in .txt format, both to conserve on precious server space but also so she wouldn't have to reformat them each time html and/or browsers were updated. By the end of June 1996 not only were state and county sites being uploaded, but the USGenWeb's first special project - The Digital Archives (a place to put all those bits & pieces, all in .txt format) was on-line. <br>Very few of the new state and county coordinators were interested in sites containing nothing but queries and links. Adding information became the order of the day: information from their own family history files, information donated by visitors, information on the state or county's history, information on state and local genealogy societies and whatever other genealogy or historical information came their way. In a short period of time 45GB of information was stored on the RootsWeb servers - an unheard of amount of web space at the time. <br>By early 1997 the USGenWeb was in full operation and the family historians on the Internet flocked to the Project's websites. By Jan 1997 RootsWeb had clocked, 7,548,846 page views of USGenWeb pages. By Jan 1998 the total had reached 15,506,224 and by Jan 1999, 21,910,869 - not too shabby for a group only three years old. | We family historians have long been used to zeroing in on a county to find information on our ancestors so the whole idea of websites devoted to genealogy for a county was exciting. During late May and early June of 1996, Jeff, Bill and a few other people kicked around the whole idea of state and county sites and out of those conversations the concept of the USGenWeb was born: a web of inter-connected genealogy sites - a site for every state in the U.S. with each state site linking to all the counties (parishes or townships) within the state and to tie the whole thing together, a national site with links to all the state sites. Since it was to be a web of genealogy sites it would be named "US GenWeb." The name had to be changed to USGenWeb because US GenWeb was a copyright violation. The words "The" and "Project" weren't added until later. <br>Concept to realization took place in less than 15 days. The announcement of USGenWeb was made on Jun 16, 1996 and volunteers rushed to adopt the proposed new state sites. On Jun 18, 1996, Dale Schneider set up an email list on his personal server and subbed 18 people to the list. Those 18 people became the first state coordinators and not a one knew the first thing about webpages or html. John Rigdon designed a shell county site and Jeff a state shell site. John also wrote the necessary code for a query site and placed it on-line. The volunteers, using the basic shell and a minimal amount of html coding, added links to the query site and whatever small amount of genealogy information was found on the web and uploaded the sites.<br>By June 20th twenty state sites were either on-line or ready to be uploaded with eleven more "in the works." The national site had been placed on-line around June 15th. As each state was uploaded Jeff added a link to the new state's site. The new state coordinators began looking for volunteers to take over the county sites. It didn't take long before the USGenWeb's first major problem was encountered. Money.<br>Free server space was rare and many people who wanted to adopt sites couldn't afford to pay for server space. Although Dale Schneider was willing to host the new sites on his personal server he couldn't afford to do it for free. Fund raising suggestions were made, but for most people on the list freely sharing genealogy information was a way of life. Another way needed to be found and that "way" turned out to be RootsWeb. <br>When first approached by Jeff, some misunderstanding or miscommunication occurred, and RootsWeb wasn't willing to host the USGenWeb sites, but that was quickly cleared up. RootsWeb offered to host the USGenWeb sites on its servers for free with no limit on the amount of space for a site. With RootsWeb making server space available for free, volunteers could afford to take on a Project site and by the end of June or very early July 1996 there was a website for every state and county on-line - ready to welcome visitors. The state coordinators were responsible for finding volunteers to man the county sites and by the end of 1996 70% of the county sites were adopted by volunteers.<br>During June while all of this was going on, one of the people on the list was Linda Lewis and she was interested in a place to put all the bits and pieces and scraps of information the average family historian squirrels away "just in case." Joy Fisher, also on the list, was concerned about the future changes of html and web browsers since both things had changed so rapidly in such a short period of time. Joy already had on-line some books she had transcribed and they were in .txt format, both to conserve on precious server space but also so she wouldn't have to reformat them each time html and/or browsers were updated. By the end of June 1996 not only were state and county sites being uploaded, but the USGenWeb's first special project - The Digital Archives (a place to put all those bits & pieces, all in .txt format) was on-line. <br>Very few of the new state and county coordinators were interested in sites containing nothing but queries and links. Adding information became the order of the day: information from their own family history files, information donated by visitors, information on the state or county's history, information on state and local genealogy societies and whatever other genealogy or historical information came their way. In a short period of time 45GB of information was stored on the RootsWeb servers - an unheard of amount of web space at the time. <br>By early 1997 the USGenWeb was in full operation and the family historians on the Internet flocked to the Project's websites. By Jan 1997 RootsWeb had clocked, 7,548,846 page views of USGenWeb pages. By Jan 1998 the total had reached 15,506,224 and by Jan 1999, 21,910,869 - not too shabby for a group only three years old. | ||
=== FREE === | === FREE === | ||