[andyofne]

Times are changing, thankfully, and a lot of records are being digitized and made available. Unfortunately, there's usually a subscription cost to incur in order to access those records.

I've been studying up on a couple genealogy forums (message boards as they call them) and it doesn't surprise me to see old timers poo-pooing those of us who are 'new' to the endeavor and are spending time doing research on line.

According to some of the old timers, you can't call yourself a genealogist unless you've traveled across the country and spent days or weeks holding a magnifying glass over a moldy ancient tome (or at least peering into a microfiche viewer in some dark state archive building).

I've purchased short term subscriptions to ancestry.com, footnote.com, and newpaperarchive.com (I suspect the same company owns all three).

On footnote, I discovered over 100 pages of my great, great, great grandfather's civil war era military records (mostly related to his pension requests after 1890). On one hand written page he had detailed a lot of information about his family history along with that of his wife. Pretty cool stuff.

In the newspaperarchive.com database, I have found hits on another branch of the family virtually ever year from 1829 to 1920. Some of it is simply a name and address but it often lists an occupation or has some tidbit about an accident or event.

The last time I tried the "online research" method was 2003 and the state of the online archives was really shitty so I have been pleasantly surprised by what I've found thus far; although there are still major gaps and plentyof missing pieces for me to find.

I can clearly see that in some cases the only way to get information is to find someone willing to help who lives in a particular place or to go there myself (unlikely!).

I've sent off for some birth, death and military records from various agencies (all charge a fee, of course). So I'm hoping to find some more useful info from those sources.