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Police searching for man reported missing after he left his group home

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Sunny skies, warmer temperatures expected into the midweek

<p>Genealogists, go pick up a cake and some colorful streamers. It&#8217;s birthday party time.</p><p>The venerable U.S. Genweb, a pioneer in online genealogy, is 20 years old.</p><p>&#8220;The USGenWeb Project consists of a group of volunteers working together to provide Internet websites for genealogical research in every county and every state of the United States,&#8221; the project&#8217;s website says.</p><p>That volunteer effort has been the key to Genweb&#8217;s success since the Internet was still a novelty. It&#8217;s genealogists helping other genealogists</p><p>Genweb won&#8217;t solve all research problems, but it can be very useful. Here&#8217;s how it works. Nearly every county in the United States has a local Genweb containing a lot of regional information, and perhaps links to other useful sites.</p><p>Those county-based sites are linked to the state-level Genweb, and all the state Genwebs are, in turn, linked to the national U.S. Genweb (www.usgenweb.com).</p><p>One way to find the particular county Genweb you want is simply by searching for the name of the county followed by the word Genweb. Or, you can come at it from the other end, starting with the national Genweb, picking your state and then picking your county.</p><p>Approach doesn&#8217;t matter. One way or another you&#8217;ll probably get a lot of material helpful to genealogical research in a particular county.</p><p>I say &#8220;probably&#8221; because the county Genwebs can vary in kind and quantity of content. Most have volunteer coordinators who tend them and keep adding material. A few, for one reason or another, have lost their coordinators.</p><p>What does a typical Genweb site contain? Contents vary. People doing genealogical research in Luzerne County, whether here or from afar, are lucky because that county site has long had a dedicated and determined coordinator named Mary Ann Lubinsky. By the way, she also supervises several other counties&#8217; Genwebs.</p><p>If you go into the Luzerne County site you&#8217;ll find many features. Among them are a query board that draws a lot of answers to questions that are posed, whether by out-of-towners or local researchers. Among its other features are community histories (with lots of early residents&#8217; names) and data on older names for those communities. You&#8217;ll also find a list of mining disasters.</p><p>Nationally not all Genweb sites are as well-stocked as our local one. But they can still potentially open the door to researching ancestors in those counties.</p><p>Don&#8217;t neglect the home pages for the state-level Genwebs.</p><p>&#8220;State websites include very important information as well, including such resources for postings of unknown county queries, family reunion bulletin boards, state histories, and maps showing the changing county boundaries, among others,&#8221; says the national Genweb. &#8220;Many states also have ongoing projects as diverse as the transcription of Civil War regiments or the reuniting of families with lost photos, bibles, etc.&#8221;</p><p>If you look around you&#8217;ll even find Genwebs for provinces in foreign countries, in English, maintained by Americans working on genealogy in those nations.</p><p>In an era when there&#8217;s an immense and growing quantity of genealogical material available online free or for pay, is the Genweb still vital? Well, it&#8217;s all genealogy, all the time, and that&#8217;s tough to beat.</p><p>So, happy 20th birthday, U.S. Genweb. Now let&#8217;s celebrate.</p><p>Genealogical Society News: The Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society will hold election for board of directors noon-12:30 p.m. on Nov. 12. The meeting will be at the society research library, in the caretaker building of the Hanover Green Cemetery, Main Road, Hanover Township. All members in good standing are invited.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/web1_TOM_MOONEY-8.jpg</photo0><caption0>Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Tom Mooney</p><p>Out on a Limb</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader genealogy columnist. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Out on a limb: For 20 years, Genweb has helped ancestral research