|
Family
History CD Review
English Origins of New England Families
1500s-1800s (CD 181)
Reviewed by John F. Whitaker
| This
title is another image product from Genealogy.com. This CD-ROM contains
images of the pages from six well-known genealogy books called English
Origins of New England Families previously published by Genealogical
Publishing Co., Inc. These books are comprised of some of the most
sought-after immigrant-origin articles from The New England Historical
and Genealogical Register. The collected articles reference
more than 143,000 individuals and include family histories traced
back to their English roots, some as far back as the 11th century.
What you can learn about each listed individual varies, depending
on the article. For the most part, this Family Archive includes
genealogies, birth records, marriage records, death records, land
records, and wills information. A considerable number of articles
provide information on groups of immigrants who are nearly-related
and on groups with a specific surnames.
Other notable inclusions are articles covering 50 of the 125
New England immigrants of royal descent and those dealing with
Mayflower passengers, colony founders and clergymen. The articles
and information in this Family Archive should be of interest and
value to those who are researching their colonial heritage.
This CD-ROM consists of two Series and within each Series there
are three Volumes of information. To assist in searching there
is an alphabetical listing of names for this resource. When you
search for a specific individual, the results of your search will
be illustrated as an image page from the text. Within this CD-ROM
are approximately 778 different works which present some very
good material from which to explore your colonial heritage.
I did a search on different surnames in my line and found some
interesting information. To begin with, when you search on a specific
name, you will be shown the preliminary results of your search
on the index. When I searched on my fraternal grandmother's line,
Hancock, I expected to get a serious number of hits and of course
I did. The index presents to you the Series number and Volume
number where a specific search result is found.
|
September
3, 1997
|
|
The results are noted as follows:
At the top of the screen is the information that tells me where the
information is found; Series 2 Volume 3 An Early Marriage Dower;
with Notes on the Lineage of Richard Scott of Providence.
| This indicates to me that some of my Hancock
line may be found in the information with Richard Scott. Going
to the image page I scroll down the page and find the reference
information I am looking for from which I determine that in
this case, I may have a lead to more Hancock information.
As in other data sets published by Genealogy.com this image
CD-ROM may cause the new user of this kind of information
to have to make an adjustment to reading the image text. To
assist you with this, at the bottom of each screen are two
icons which allow you to zoom in or out to make the image
text larger or smaller. This feature is very good for those
who need to have larger text in order to view the material.
|
|
|
This
CD-ROM has a tremendous amount of information...
The ease at which the data is presented has
made it easier to find information that is important
to this process.
|
|
|
In trying to assess the overall value of this CD-ROM I found
two things which define it. First, it appears from each of the
four searches I did on names and lines I am interested in, I was
exposed to new information that needed to be considered. In my
case this is important in as much as a fair bit of my New England
research was done by others and my wife and I have been trying
to verify information for some years now. The ease at which this
CD-ROM presents information has made it easier to find information
that is important to this process. I suspect that others would
find this to also be the case. Second, there is a tremendous amount
of information. On each search I did, the number of search hits
were considerable. This is good and maybe for some bad... The
good news is the information is presented quickly and is easy
to access and review. The "bad" news is I now have some work in
front of me. But, it was quicker than going up to the library
and going through page after page of the books that are compiled
on this particular CD-ROM.
As far as strengths and shortcomings on this CD-ROM, the printing
and saving to a file are still far less than adequate. Standard
print icons and print options are needed along with the Save As
features as in all the windows programs that we have used. And,
though not a true shortcoming of the product, these CD-ROMs and
others like them are a wake-up call for those genealogists who
are not using higher speed computers. The need to present, save
and print the graphics found on this CD-ROM and others like it
will test an older computer's capabilities.
| Any time you have a product that has images
on it, the speed of the computer becomes important. As a result,
some genealogists who are using 386 or some 486 machines will
experience a slower rate of performance in the overall use
and access of the information off these CD-ROMs with graphic
images. This of course will have no effect on the value of
the information. That of course is going to be based upon
the quality of work put in by the publishers and compilers
of the information. I would add that in this specific CD-ROM
there is so much information that some might wince due to
the preponderance of information. On the other hand that is
also a strength. |
|
|
|
About
the Author
John
F. Whitaker was one
of the original founders of the company Automated Archives, Inc. which
was purchased by Genealogy.com (formerly Banner Blue Software) in 1994.
While with AAI he was responsible for Marketing & Sales and the coordination
with The Family History Library, Centers and Libraries. John has been
involved in genealogy and family history since 1972. He is a lecturer
and presenter at many regional and national conferences for genealogical
organizations and President of Automated
Research, Inc.
Back
to Top of Article
|
|
 |
