AncestorNews: Portals to Your Pedigree

A genealogy portal is a Web site that acts as a door to hundreds of other sites. The most well-known portal is probably Cyndi’s List, which links to more than 178,000 other genealogy sites. Although you won’t find your ancestor on a portal site, you will find links to help in your research.

Cyndi’s List is organized alphabetically by subject. Each heading notes the number of active links and the date that the category was last updated. For example, “Germans from Russia” contains 253 links links that were last updated on Oct. 4, 2002.

Cyndi’s List is an excellent site to visit if you’re just starting research in a new state or you’re tackling a new subject.

Another of my favorite portals is John Fuller’s Genealogy Resources on the Internet. This site is organized by Web sites, mailing lists, e-mail sites and Telnet, Gopher and Usenet sites. But there’s far more to this site than meets the eye. Take your time and poke around. The E-Mail Sites page, for example, contains e-mail addresses to general, geographic and surname sections. Here, you’ll find links to surname associations, family journals and newsletters. The Web-site area contains links to resources worldwide.

Do you have a favorite portal? Write and let me know. Here are some other portal sites:

• The Genealogy Home Page
www.genhomepage.com/really_new.html

• The Original Genealogy Barrel of Links
www.genealogytoday.com/barrel/links1.html

• Family Sites
www.genealogytoday.com/barrel/links3.html

• Genealogy Links
www.genealogylinks.net