Beginning today, if all goes as planned, anyone with an Internet connection will be able to search through old passenger manifests from the ships that ferried 17 million immigrants into New York Harbor, and the New World, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

To find records, the curious can go to www.ellisislandrecords.org. Seen on a computer screen, the ship manifests are prosaic documents: page after page, column after column of names, ages and other dry particulars

Officials of the Statue of Liberty- Ellis Island Foundation, which runs the museum and the family history project, expect millions of people will want to use the Internet site. As a guide, they looked to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which put up its own genealogy Web site, www.familysearch.org, two years ago. 

It was so popular that, in the beginning, it crashed almost every day.

The Mormon Church, which has put some 600 million records from all over the world on its site, also provided the labor for the Ellis Island project. About 12,000 volunteer members spent much of the last eight years extracting data from microfilms.

Enjoy!

Eunice B. Kirkman ~**~  [log in to unmask]
  ~*The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia*~

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html