Uniting Generations

And then came the Internet, which changed everything. The Internet collapses distance and time: As genealogists link databases, seek out and find individuals in the vastness of cyberspace, the New World and the Old World shake hands and fuse. America Online's Geneaology forum is one of the most frequently visited sites on line. It offers help and "chats" on every conceivable area of genealogy, including family reunions, and is well set up for the novice, anticipating the most basic questions and inviting you to pose your own. If want to start on the World Wide Web directly, head for the World Wide Web Genealogy Resource home page. From there you can link up to a wide array of ethnic and national genealogical Web sites and bulletin boards, from Slovenia to Jamaica to Norway.

World Wide Web Genealogy Resource

A new wave of reunions has resulted from the desire to see in the flesh the names clustered on a computer-generated family tree. Genealogical reunions are adult-oriented events held at hotels, with the focus on gathering and sharing genealogical and historical information.

Because genealogy brings together people who have never met, such gatherings aren't considered "reunions." "We've never united before, so we can't really say we're holding a reunion," says Georgia Baldwin, who helped organize the first Baldwin Union in Connecticut. "When we hold our second one, then it'll be a reunion."

In the genealogical quest, personal issues often merge with those of the larger ethnic group: For many African-American families genealogy makes whole -- if only on paper -- families ripped apart by slavery. There's something consoling in naming and remembering those who, having had no choice in their destinies, would otherwise have been forgotten long ago. Genealogy documents, and so celebrates, the triumph of longstanding family stability.

For Jewish families, genealogy often ties together cousins scattered across the world not only by the Holocaust but by anti-Semitic pogroms in Europe long before World War II. Completed family trees record and honor those who perished while pulling together those who made it through. And while the numbers of Holocaust victims are so overwhelming as to be impossible to absorb, those numbers come into heartbreakingly human scale on a family tree with name after name on branch after branch recorded with the words "Died 1943," "Died 1944," "Died 1945," surrounded by black borders, and with a complete absence of descendants.

If one group keeps the most detailed genealogical records in America, it would have to be the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Church of Latter-Day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons, emphasizes the fact that in the end we're all related, often much more closely than we know. For Mormons, genealogy has the moral imperative of a spiritual quest. In their belief, those alive today may choose to make covenants -- special promises -- with ancestors who have gone ahead to the spirit world, covenants that may one day unite the entire extended family.

But those ancestors must be accurately identified first, which is why the Church of Latter-Day Saints has taken on the mammoth task of collecting genealogical information about families all over the world. This tremendous resource for all genealogists amounts to more than 1 1/2 billion names -- perhaps your name, my name, the names of our grandparents, and those great-great-uncles we never knew existed -- all stashed away in the Saints' "mountain of names." Branch offices, the LDS Family History Centers, can be found across the country and are open to all genealogists, amateur as well as experienced.

Although genealogy is a highly complex field, there are many resources available for the budding genealogist. A beginner's project aimed at bringing your family's lineage into focus may be easier than you think. Following are some tips that will get even the rankest beginner going.