Genealogy: Help
This website provides a broad range of genealogy related services,
generally focussing on, but not limited to, south-western Ontario.
- A family tree
of tens of thousands of individuals whose families have
passed through south-western Ontario, and in particular Middlesex
County. This is not a static family tree but rather a dynamic
entity that can be contributed to by anyone interested in these
families. Since the facilities to update the tree are provided
on the web, users can contribute to the tree from anywhere in the
world, using any form of access. There are two specific links
on this page:
- A link to the top level page which provides a
set of management tools
for all of the tables making up the
family tree database.
- A link to the index of the most commonly used table, the
table of individuals.
- A page for
submitting research requests.
- Pointers to other sources of genealogical information broken down
geographically. This site focuses in particular on Canada, so there
are a number of special services for collecting, distributing, and
managing genealogical information for Canada. These comprise:
- Transcriptions of parts of the
censuses of Canada from 1851 to 1911.
These transcriptions cover more columns of the originals than are
available from other sites, and can be searched using a lot of ways
that are not supported. For example you could search for all Butchers
in an area, or for Chinese individuals, or for members of the
Swedenborgian church. Although the completed portions of the
transcriptions are largely limited to south-western Ontario, the
service itself supports the entire country, and again can be
contributed to by many people through a web interface.
- Transcriptions of thousands of
birth, marriage, and death registrations
for the province of Ontario. Although Ancestry provides a much more
complete transcription, access to their service is by subscription,
and the service on this site provides more search options.
The transcription service supports contribution from volunteers
through a web interface.
- A collection of user guides for particular issues in genealogy.
All pages in this web site include a header and trailer section.
These sections display the hierarchy of web pages leading to the current
page, so you can quickly move back up the tree toward the top. In addition
the trailer section contains a link to send an e-mail to the webmaster
regarding the page.
The most important element of the header is the button
displayed in the upper right corner of the page. This button tracks your
status as a user of the web site. When a user first enters the web site this
button displays the text "Sign On". Clicking on the button displays a
user signon/registration dialog.
Identifying yourself to the web-site
makes many additional features and services available.
Once you have signed on this button changes to display your user name. If you
click on the button now it takes you to an
account management dialog.
