Beginning in 1790, the United States of America became the first country in the world to call for regularly held censuses. However, the Constitution didn’t treat everyone as equal. “Free persons” excluded American Indians living on treaty land and who were exempt from paying taxes (or voting). However, any male Indian who had joined the voting and taxpaying (read: white) population became considered a “free person” and had the right to vote. “All other persons” meant slaves, who were counted as 3/5 of a person for determining representation in Congress. The 3/5 rule was to compensate for the large slave populations of southern states such as Virginia and South Carolina, where slaves represented 39 and 43 percent of

the populations, respectively. For comparison, Connecticut and New Jersey had slave populations of 1.1 and 6.2 percent, respectively.

(more…)

As with any other start up, a new multi-level marketing (MLM) venture owner will look to friends, family, and acquaintances for support. The MLM business owner must sell the parent company s products or services and contact individuals that might be interested in becoming an independent distributor in his or her network. When the family, friends, and acquaintances have been exhausted, other viable leads may include people who were previously part of an MLM network. These prospects are called MLM genealogy leads.

(more…)

Do you ever wonder what happened to your old grade school, high school or college friends? Maybe you’d like to get in touch and see how they’re doing? It’s not as hard as you may think, thanks to the Internet. Here are some tips for using the Internet to find old friends:

First, the most obvious places to check are the big classmate and reunion sites. Check out Classmates.com and Reunion.com first. You’ll find a decent portion of the people from your high school class listed on these sites, especially Classmates.com, since they’ve been around the longest and advertise the most. Unfortunately, if you find someone on one of these sites, you’ll have to pay for membership to contact

them. The sites have to pay the bills somehow and that’s the catch. However, if you don’t want to pay, there are other options. Quite often, if the person you are looking for is a female and has gotten married, you will be able to see what their new last name is, which will make finding them a whole lot easier for you. You’ll also be able to see the city where the person lives *now*, again, another valuable detail.

(more…)

Birth records can provide a wealth of information about an individual. For those performing genealogical research, this information can be invaluable. Hitting a wall in your genealogy search can be frustrating and sometimes new birth records are all you need to get the ball rolling again.

Birth records document an individual’s full birth name, the exact date and time of birth and their parents’ full names. Depending on the time and location in which they were filed, you may also learn the parents’ social security numbers, address at the time of the birth, occupations and other pertinent details. These details can lead your genealogical research in new directions.

(more…)

Are you researching your family history? A great way of generating interest that may lead to further information is to create a web site of your family tree and family history information. Many of the better Genealogy Software programs provide the opportunity to do this. Alternatively, submitting your GEDCOM file to the numerous (and free) genealogy sites gives your name and history a presence on the World Wide Web. Another alternative is to use a free hosting service, eg Yahoo GeoCities where you can create your own web site. However these free hosting sites often have restrictions on how much you can display and are often difficult for the first time user.

(more…)