RootsChat.com

Sarah Mackay of Bury, Lancashire, England, used the Internet frequently in an attempt to learn about her family tree. However, she became annoyed because most of the results were geared towards people living in America - stuff like census and trade information, old photos, and maps. All of Sarah's ancestors were British, so the information found seemed worthless to her.

Sarah discussed the problem with her fiancé, Trystan Davies. According to Miss Mackay, "I was complaining to Trystan, and he asked me what I would do if I were running a website. Then he said, 'Why not do it?' So we did."

The result was launched on December 31, 2003. RootsChat.com is described as an easy-to-use messaging forum for everyone researching their family history or local history. The focus is on Ireland and the British Isles. The site's home page states, "Local Historians and Family Historians have a great deal of knowledge to share. This service is entirely free, with the hope that you and the historian and genealogy community as a whole will benefit from it."

In fact, there seem to be no records or transcribed lists on this site. It is devoted almost entirely to message boards, one for every county in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The site also has separate message boards for genealogy beginners, one for specific census records, and even one labeled, "For Sale/Wanted."

Trystan Davies says that people are more than happy to look for other people's ancestors. "It's like detective work. It's so enjoyable, it doesn't seem to matter whether people are building their own family trees or other people's. I think there's also the feeling people get of helping each other."

The site's most popular feature is the monthly challenge to obtain as much information as possible on a randomly selected person from the 1881 census. As well as being fun, the results hold valuable clues so that others have a better chance of finding long-lost relatives.

The website gets about 2 million hits a month and has 160,000 members across the globe. According to Davies, "About 90% of people using the site say it has helped them, and the more people use it, the more information goes on it, so the more useful it becomes."

You can check out the message boards on RootsChat.com for yourself at http://www.RootsChat.com.

Comments

[Cliff Venier]

I use Rootschat. So far about 1/3 of my queries have yielded valuable information not easily found otherwise. For example, Essex records are not at the Society of Genealogist in London but at the Essex Records Office. Some nice chap looked up the birth of my ancestor for me. I encourage others to try Rootschat.

[Trish]

I also use rootschat - It is brilliant. It also has message boards for immigrants/emigrants so is useful for countries outside of the UK. It is the friendliest, most helpful forum site I have ever found on the WWW.

[Debbe]

Hi,

I was wondering if there is a software that would compare what is DIFFERENT between the two GEDCOMs... I don't want to know the MATCHES..

GEDMATCH and GEDSMART does not seem to do what I WANT... I just want to know the different between the two database..
For example

Person A give a copy of GEDCOM to Person B
and Person B make some changes - Dates or place or add a name or change a name...
Person B send it BACK to person A

Person A want to know what DIFFERENT between her version of GEDCOM vs person B version...

I hope you have an answer or make wake up for some programmer who might have some FREE to create this????

Debbe Hagner