Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Sunday, July 28, 2013

In which I eat my words, yet again.

In my last post, I made an unfortunate brief, off-hand comment for which I should have known better. My reference to the USGenWeb.org was not well thought out. Thanks to a commentator for keeping me on track. Please accept my apology. 

Quoting from the main page of the USGenWeb.org:
Welcome to The USGenWeb Project! We are a group of volunteers working together to provide free genealogy websites for genealogical research in every county and every state of the United States. This Project is non-commercial and fully committed to free genealogy access for everyone. 
Organization is by county and state, and this website provides you with links to all the state genealogy websites which, in turn, provide gateways to the counties. The USGenWeb Project also sponsors important Special Projects at the national level and this website provides an entry point to all of those pages, as well. 
Clicking on a State Link (on the left) will take you to the State's website. Clicking on the tabs above will take you to additional information and links. You can also use the drop down menu in the upper left hand corner which will also take you to the State's website of your choice. 
All of the volunteers who make up The USGenWeb Project are very proud of this endeavor and hope that you will find their hard work both beneficial and rewarding. Thank you for visiting!
The USGenWeb.org can contain any or all of the following:

• Transcribed census records, tombstones, deed records, etc.
• Local courthouse and government offices information
• Surnames of others researching similar family names
• Possible ancestor photos, and or historical landscape photos
• Newspaper articles of decades gone by
• Transcriptions or abstracts of journals and diaries
• Historical maps of the local area

The USGenWeb.org and all the subsidiary projects are an extremely valuable place to find local sources not available from other online sources. From the comment it is true that the USGenWeb.org contains a considerable amount of source information, depending on the activity of the volunteers in the counties. 

Once again, please accept my apology for a misstatement regarding sources. I can't decide whether I classify it as a link-to site or a database. It certainly has both features. I would put it in the same category as Cindi's List and the FamilySearch Research Wiki, but with names in addition to sources. What I said about being searchable is correct. If you do a Google search for your family names, you will find content in the USGenWeb.org. 

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