The Roots Surname List (RSL)
The RootsWeb Surname List is basically a list of surnames, submitted by researchers from all over the world. There are currently over 248,349 surname listings (as of May, 1997) on the Roots list, submitted by 8,274 subscribers world-wide. The address of the Roots-L search site is:

Just type this address into your browser's "Location" window and press "Enter" (or, if you're reading this on-line, click on the "Click Here" link above). When you arrive at the RSL (Roots Surname List), you are presented with a search window which allows you to enter the surname and, optionally, the location of the person you're searching for. After you type in the surname you're looking for and press the "Enter" key, a list of entries for that surname, submitted by other genealogists worldwide, pops up.

Each entry has the dates and the location(s) of the line they're researching (one of mine, for example, reads "Bray - 1830 to present - OH -> MI -> Omaha, NE -> Ventura, CA", showing that I'm interested in the Bray line, that I've gotten back as far as 1830 and that the line I'm working on migrated from Ohio to Michigan, to Omaha and to Ventura, California).

If you see a listing of a surname you're working on in a time-frame and location that matches an ancestor, it's very possible that someone else is also working on your line and may have information valuable to you (and, of course, you may be of help to them). The listing includes a "link" to the researcher's name, their address and/or e-mail address so that you can contact them to exchange information.

You can also post listings for all the lines you are interested in which can then be read and responded to by other researchers. There is absolutely no charge for using these features of the Roots-L Surname List. On the night of Friday, June 6th, 1997, after the "Heritage Quest Road Show", which was in my town of Albany, Oregon, that weekend, I came home and used the RSL to look up the name "Bovee". I was looking for a Minerva Bovee, who had married my great-great grandfather, Darius S. Grant. I had not been able, in several months of looking, to find a single reference to the "Bovee" surname. I searched the RSL and there were only 2 researchers who had posted listings for that name. I wrote to both of them, that night, by e-mail. On Sunday, I received answers from both of them. The first said that he had no names in common, but would hold on to the names I had sent and contact me if he ran across them (a standard practice among 'Web-based genealogists). The second person wrote to say that he had no information, but referred me to a Bovee he had contacted some time before, who had a book on "The Bovee Family in America". I contacted this fellow, again by e-mail, and he had information about my great-great grandmother, her relationship to Darius, the person she married after Darius died, the descendants of both of her marriages, her second husband and could trace her ancestors in America back to 1685, complete with reference citations to primary and secondary evidence!!!

What is a mail list?
A mail list is basically a list of e-mail addresses maintained by a person (known as the "listowner") who can then send e-mail "copies" of the same information to all of the addresses on the list at the same time. Typically, the people whose addresses appear on the list have some interest in common about which they want to share information; in our case, that interest is genealogy. When someone has information they want to share (or wants to query the other list members for information), that person sends (or "posts") an e-mail with their information (or request) to the list. (The list for each surname has a special address to send "postings" to.) Every person on the list then receives that posting in his or her e-mail box and can evaluate it to see if they have matching information. The posting has your return address (or e-mail address) on it, so that interested researchers can contact you.

How Can I Find Mail Lists?
You can log on to the RootsWeb Surname Mail Lists by typing the following address into the "Location" box of your browser:

When you arrive there, you will see a row of letters across the screen; press the one that the surname you're researching starts with. You will be taken to a list of all the surname mailing lists that start with that initial. Scroll through this list to find the one you're interested in. When you've found it, press on the surname written in BLUE letters in the paragraph that describes the list; an e-mail form will pop up. It will be pre-addressed. Type the word "subscribe" in the body of the letter - nothing else, only the word "subscribe" (without quotes). Also, type the word "subscribe" in the "Subject" line of the letter. Then mail it. That's all there is to subscribing.

In the next day or two, you will receive an e-mail from the listowner telling you about the list, what rules it may have and giving you the e-mail addresses to send your postings and requests for subscribing / unsubscribing to, etc.. From that point on, you will receive mailings from that list. If you decide, at some point, that you're no longer interested in the list, you simply follow the subscription instructions above, but put the word "unsubscribe" in your message instead of "subscribe". Easy, huh?

How Can I Use Mail Lists?
You can imagine that, particularly with common surnames and surnames with large numbers of active researchers, many postings can be sent in a single day. In the early days of mailing lists, it was not uncommon to have to wade through many mailings every day, looking for the specific information you sought. Since then, researchers have dreamed up a very clever way to minimize the hassle of having to read many mailings that have no connection with your research.

As you probably know, e-mail letters (like regular "snail-mail" letters) have to have several elements and there are blanks for each of these elements on your e-mail program"s letter-composition window. You need to have the address to which you want to send the e-mail, a subject line that describes the letter and the text that forms the body of the letter. Surname listowners (as well as users like yourself) usually require that you use the subject line to describe your posting using the name, date and locality of the person(s) you seek information on. For example, one of my first postings was for my great-great grandfather, Darius S. Grant, who lived in Dimondale, Michigan, until his death in 1864 (the husband of the Minerva Bovee, who I mentioned earlier). He was as far back as I had been able to get with the Grant line in 5 months of searching. The subject line for my posting looked like this:

Seeking Darius S. Grant (1830-1864, Michigan)

I posted this inquiry on Friday, June 6th, after coming home from the first night of the "Heritage Quest Road Show". When I came home on Saturday night, I found an enthusiastic (well, jubilant, actually) e-mail in my e-mail box from a 3rd cousin (a Grant direct descendant). She knew all about Darius, knew about his parents, his three siblings and had detailed information and documentation for ALL of their descendants EXCEPT Darius S. Grant's!!! She sent me all of this information and I was able to supply her with 45 pages of documentation and photos on all of Darius' descendants.

As you can see, the RootsWeb services are very useful, very powerful and are easy to use, as well. In addition, they are free. The RootsWeb project also has additional services that it provides for members. It uses membership and sponsorship donations to pay for the services it provides and the equipment it takes to provide them. With membership ($12.00/year), RootsWeb will supply you with mailing lists in indexed form and allow you to perform searches of all of their archives. With a Sponsorship ($24.00/year), they can provide automatic notification when any researcher posts your surname to any of their lists and can set you up with your own mail account, which means you'll automatically receive copies of any e-mail containing the surname(s) you specify, allowing you to hook up more easily with other researchers. They also have cemetery lists and other services we can talk about in future columns.

Finally, I should mention that the RootsWeb project will set up and host up to 2 surname mail lists each for members and sponsors (who become the listowners of those lists), so if you don't see a list for the surname you seek, you can start one!!

Well, until next month, my friends, have fun. It is, after all, summer (or it was, when I wrote this article!) . See you next time!!

Byron C. Bray
byron.bray@cmug.com