Before the Internet, sharing the fruits of all your hard genealogical work with relatives and fellow researchers meant lugging pedigree charts to family reunions, printing books, photocopying and even using something called a mimeograph. If you wanted to show your family tree to someone across the country, you needed plenty of postage stamps. Today, however, you can post pedigrees online for free, for others to access in the blink of a modem.

Personal genealogy pages have sprouted faster than you can Google for Poindexter family history. Homegrown sites have helped make genealogy the second-most-popular topic on the Web, behind only pornography.