Stuffis

Still "Brent's pile o' stuff" but at least now there are sections.

Genealogy

(Check the "updated" notation for each section; a lot are very out-of-date!)

Starting Points

• Cyndi's List is the most comprehensive online reference; start with the Beginners section
• Visit the Genealogy section of About
• Visit the Big List of Genealogy Links (suggested by Liz—thanks!)
• Read about 20 Ways to Avoid Genealogical Grief
• The LDS church FamilySearch site has a "How Do I Get Started?" section, and a list of Family History Centers in the U.S.
• Beginning Genealogy Lessons by Don B. Dale

Research Resources

• Behind the Name: find related names from other ethnic backgrounds (e.g. John = Juan = Ivan)
• Where to find public records online (lifehacker)
• Genealogy Specific Search Techniques: online directories etc. (about.com)
• 10 Steps for Finding Your Family Tree Online (about.com)
• RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project (merged with Ancestry World Tree) and other Free Surname Databases
• Online Searchable Death Indexes
• Fifty Questions for Family Interviews (about.com)
• Repositories of Primary Sources organized geographically
• The Newberry Library of genealogy in Chicago
• Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System (and the U.S. Civil War Center for general Civil War information)
• Federal documents available to genealogists

Research - Census

• Obtaining EDs etc. for the Census
• Tools: Census Spreadsheets (PDF and XLS)
• What's in the U.S. Census Records? and Clues in Census Records

Research - Social Security

• Search the Social Security Death Index (SSDI)
• FAQ on the Social Security Administration and Genealogy
• Description of Social Security number format [ftp://oak.oakland.edu/pub/misc/ss-info/ssninfo.txt] (dead link)

Software

• Someday I'd like to create a genealogy visualizer using a hyperbolic tree browser like this, or maybe with RGraph.
• Robert's Genealogy has a section on LifeLines; that page also has some good GEDCOM information and a copy of the GEDCOM 5.5.1-5 standard (PDF)
• LifeLines for Unix-like operating systems, including Mac OS X
• Tim Doyle and Randy Winch IGM (Indexed GEDCOM Method) scripts (for creating HTML from GEDCOM)
• The Perl-GEDCOM Mailing List and Paul Johnson's CPAN Gedcom.pm

Web Site Creation

• Cyndi's Genealogy Home Page Construction Kit
• Privacy Issues and logos for conforming sites
• Guidelines For Publishing Web Pages On The Internet and Standards For Sharing Information With Others, recommended by the National Geographic Society, May 2000

GEDCOM and XML

• Genealogical Data and XML (30 Dec 2005: roundup of various XML efforts)
• Analysis of LDS Church's Adoption of XML (21 Feb 2001: great summary by Bob Velke)

• GEDCOM 5.5 has some representational shortcomings, but more importantly, some data model shortcomings (evidence/facts vs. conclusions)
• The LDS Church is adopting XML to replace the representation, but explicitly not altering the data model
• Unfortunately, most efforts to create a new data model, switch to XML, etc. seem to have gone nowhere; GEDCOM remains the lingua franca

• Michael Kay's GedML (2 Apr 2002; modeled after GEDCOM; useful for GEDCOM-to-XML round trip for XSLT transforms, etc.)
• Jerry Fitzpatrick's GeniML (circa 2004)
• Genealogy XML Yahoo! Group and XGenML
• The GENTECH Genealogical Data Model (GDM) - took a long time, fostered lots of discussion about models, never resulted in a concrete format (LeXML)?
• GEDCOM XML 6.0 Draft (LDS Church: explicitly retains the GEDCOM 5.5 data model)

Databases

• Gene Stark's GENDEX, the WWW Genealogical Index (great distributed data model) [dead]
• Tim Doyle's GenWeb Database Index [dead]
• Rex Myer's Webified Genealogy (beautiful HTML trees) [dead]
• The GenWeb Foundation and the U.S. GenWeb Project (state by state)
• Chris Perry's GenMatch can help match your database entries to others [dead

Other Information

• A Glossary of Ancient Diseases
• A list of nicknames and naming traditions
• The Census Bureau Gazetteer (places and maps)
• U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) query

• Latitude, Longitude Format Conversion (GNIS gives DMS)

Of Personal Interest

• Minnesota Libraries
• Cook County, IL Genealogical Requests
• Scandinavian Genealogy Pages
• Sweden (city.net)
• Örebro, Sweden
• Alabama Civil War Regimental Histories
• Sullivan County, IN

• The Sullivan County Historical Society ( map)
• Sullivan County Health Department ( map)
• Carlisle, IN ( map)
• • Carlisle Branch, Sullivan Cty. Library ( map)
  • Old Town Cemetery ( USGS GNIS) ( map)
  • (Independent Order of) Odd Fellows Cemetery ( USGS GNIS) ( map)
  • Haddon Cemetery ( USGS GNIS) ( map)
• Sullivan, IN ( map)

• Lawrence County, IL est. 1821

• Russellville, IL ( map)
• • Tewalt Cemetery ( USGS GNIS) ( map)

My contact information, brief autobiography (such as it is), and family tree.