Head Tale

Just the other day, I was thinking to myself “with all the social networking sites out there, when is somebody going to design an online genealogy site that works in a similar way – you enter the information you know about your family and ancestors and then connect to other family members who have entered information you don't have?” 

I surfed to MetaFilter that night and lo and behold, there was a link to a new site named Kindo that does something along that line, although not nearly as fully-featured as a hardcore genealogist would want.  The comments in the MetaFilter have lots of good information about online genealogy resources including the mention of another Web 2.0 genealogy site named Geni (which also isn't as full-featured as you might want.)

The highlight of the thread though was finding a site called Automated Genealogy, a volunteer project to type up digital versions of Canada's early censuses.  I took a genealogy class in library school but have to admit that I frequently found it less than enlightening so I honestly don't even remember if this site was mentioned in class or not.  It may have been but I don't remember seeing it. 

So I spent some time poking around and lo and behold, found this which is the record for John and Janet Brown, my dad's maternal great-grandparents who first settled the farm in 1883 that our family still owns to this day.  My dad's grandpa, James Leslie Brown, isn't listed in the record but would've been 23 at the time of this census so presumably had left home.  (Leslie would marry three years later, coincidentally in Weyburn, SK where my dad also got married and where I am currently living.) 

Anyhow, very cool anytime you come across records like this that give you a real connection to the people who came before you, doubly so when it's found almost by accident.