NYMONROE-L Archives

Archiver > NYMONROE > 2006-07 > 1153137296


From: "evelyn cooper" <>
Subject: Re: [NYMONROE-L] Anniversary
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 07:54:56 -0400
References: <000a01c6a956$40864220$f2226546@Lydia>


Dick,

Thanks for telling us about the history of this web site, Rootsweb, etc. I,
for one, wasn't aware of all the connections MyFamily had. I'm one who
believes genealogy should be - non-profit - as
Brian Leverich and Karen Isaacson had as a beginning goal.

Thank you for all the time you've spent for the benefit of each of us and
the thousands of future researchers.

Evelyn in Maine

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dick Halsey" <>
To: <>
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 12:05 AM
Subject: [NYMONROE-L] Anniversary


>
> I waited until after midnight to post this. Monday, July 17th is
> the tenth anniversary of the GenWeb of Monroe County. In March of 1996 a
> group of people in Kentucky got the idea to set up a genealogy website
> for each county. The idea caught on fire and by July 1996 people were
> asking for volunteers for NY counties. I was doing the Rochester
> Genealogical Society web pages at the time so the lady that was the NY
> State GenWeb coordinator asked if I would do the Monroe County GenWeb. I
> wasn't the first person to volunteer in NY State but I was the first to
> have GenWeb site up in New York State. At first it was just a few web
> pages.
>
> The original site was on Vivanet, a local Rochester internet
> provider. The cemetery records were in text format, not web pages. I
> started to run out of space by 2000 and then Vivanet abruptly closed
> down. I moved to website to RootsWeb in Nov. 2000. RootsWeb dates back
> to early 1996. It was founded by Brian Leverich and Karen Isaacson.
> Their intention was to make RootsWeb a non-profit organization. That
> never happened. Instead, in June 2000, RootsWeb was sold to My
> Family.com with the stipulation that space for RootsWeb be made
> available for free. MyFamily owns not only RootsWeb but also, Ancestry,
> Genealogy.com and FamilyTreeMaker.com. They have stuck to their
> agreement and there are no ads on the GenWeb pages. The only time you
> will see ads is when you do a search. Those come from Picosearch, the
> program/website that I use as a search program.
>
> Originally I had a message area that I had to manually paste
> each message onto a web page. That was a pain to maintain. I started
> making use of the message board on RootsWeb and ended up moving the
> messages back to 1996 to that message board. I noticed that just last
> week, Monday, was posted the 10,000th message.
>
> I began adding postcards and other pictures in Jan. 2003. There
> are now approx. 550 pictures. I know that technically they don't have
> anything to do with genealogy but they do show you what the area was
> like in the past.
>
> This list started on April 17, 1999. I sent out messages
> announcing the list to people and within 10 minutes Cathy C. was the
> first to sign up. I think there were about 20 people that signed up the
> first day. Now there are 365 people on this list. I was afraid that the
> list would take up a lot of my time to maintain. I was wrong! I see that
> I was wrong in part because of so many of you respond to messages much
> quicker than I ever could. Plus there were only 2 abuses in the last ten
> years. That is because the messages are all text messages. The server
> bounces any messages sent to it that are not subscribers or are in not
> in text format. Did you know that all the messages are archived? You can
> view all messages from the page at:
> http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/nymonroe. Notice that there are 4
> messages from before the list began. That is because it takes the date
> on the sender's computer and people had the wrong date on their
> computer. There is also a search page at:
> http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl?list=NYMONROE At
> first the message board and the list were totally separate. Then someone
> showed me how to have the message board send new postings to the list.
> So over the years there been a little over 15,000 list message.
>
> So currently on the GenWeb of Monroe County there are about 700
> web pages for about 300 megabytes total of the whole web site. There are
> still things that I can add. I still have other biographies to scan plus
> I still have more veteran's records for Holy Sepulchre and Mt. Hope. And
> more old postcards and pictures.
>
> Finally, I have an anniversary gift for you. I have a new
> sub-section: on-line books. It is at:
> http://www.rootsweb.com/~nymonroe/book/index.htm So far, there are only
> two books, both by Arch Merrill. I found out that the copyright had run
> out on these books. On-line is Arch's first book; "A River Ramble,"
> which chronicles his trek up the Genesee River from the source in
> Pennsylvania to where it empties into Lake Ontario. Also on-line is
> Arch's fifth book "Rochester Sketchbook" about interesting citizens of
> Rochester. I cut the books into a few web pages each including all the
> pictures. I hope you will enjoy reading them. I sure did!
>
> Dick
>
>
>
> ==== NYMONROE Mailing List ====
> Monroe County is home to Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, Paychex and many
> more companies.
>

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