[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] SGGEE benefits

[Gary Warner]

Dear List Members:

I cannot help but notice that many of you who use this mail list are not 
members of SGGEE.  We welcome you to our list.  As you know, the list serve 
that you are reading is a free service from SGGEE.  While it is a useful 
place to ask for and receive direction on problems that you are 
encountering in your research, it is not the best place to discover how you 
are related to other members of the list, or to other members of SGGEE that 
are not using the list.

Ask yourself which of the following is a more likely way to make progress 
in your research:

1.  You post messages to the list with data about your direct lines 
ancestors and hope that others will see a connection to their lines, even 
though you have not yet completed enough research to determine the surnames 
that link you to a distant cousin, or

2.  You send your pedigree data (including all known cousins) into SGGEE, 
and we combine your data with the data from other members of SGGEE (the 
database is growing daily and is currently more than 155,000 names, 
including more than 80,000 names from original Polish and Volhynian 
records).  We then merge your data (match it up with other data that is the 
same as yours) with that from others and the original records, and then let 
you see how your names are connected to other SGGEE data.  Note that the 
on-line database we have developed uses a unique identifier for each 
submitter, and the column that notes that identifier contains the 
identifier for every person who has contributed to the data for that name 
in the database, so it is easy to see who else is researching your 
lines.  The database is linked upward and downward so that you can follow a 
family up or down in time.  At your request, we will also send you a GEDCOM 
file of all the data from others that is in common with your data.  That 
file can then be used in any genealogy program so that you can see how 
people in that file are related to you.  Note that a free program called 
Legacy has the ability to define you as the person to whom all in the file 
are to be related, and then by simply browsing the names in the file, you 
can discover who is your cousin, aunt, etc without you having a personal 
knowledge that this is so.

The choice is yours, but we suggest that you have much to gain by joining 
SGGEE (see the website page http://sggee.org/MemAreaDesc.html for what you 
are missing by not being a member, and note that even more services are in 
the process of development), if you have not already done so.  In addition 
your membership fee will help us continue to pay expenses related to our 
ongoing extraction of original records

Gary Warner
SGGEE co-webmaster