Sunday, November 29, 2009

A new Query Website

Back in the olden days, genealogists sent queries about their ancestors to genealogy societies in the areas where those ancestors lived, and waited patiently for someone to see the query, realize it's their family, and send a letter to the query poster. Sometimes it took many years to get a response. Sometimes you never got a response.
With the advent of the internet and groups like Rootsweb (now Ancestry) and Genealogy.com (Genforum), digital message boards were developed. I'm guessing most of you have posted to either or both of these. They both offer message boards for localities and surnames.
Now there's another message board site, http://genqueries.com/. Dick Eastman, probably the foremost genealogy blogger in the US, developed this site. It's essentially one huge database, with categories for locations and surnames and also ads (for genealogy services and societies) and event listings. It's very similar in concept to Craig's List, but for genealogists. GenQueries is advertised as having no fees, no spam, no account required, and no invasion of your privacy. You can even sign up for an RSS feed and monitor postings without searching through the site.
This site just went public the beginning of November, so it doesn't have a huge number of posts yet. But notice that you can search the entire site from the search box at the left top of the home page.
And yes, SGS was one of the first societies listed--back on September 21st.
Do let me know if you have any success posting to GenQueries. I'm still hoping!

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