2011 Year End Genealogy Website Rankings – Top 125 Websites Globally – #Global, #Genealogy, #Rankings

Two months ago Stanczyk produced an analysis of Genealogical Website rankings after reading the Eastmans Online Genealogy Network blog about one from Canada??.  Since that time, I have been monitoring my own blog’s rankings every month to see how I have been progressing and I am very thankful for you, my good readers. But before we close out the 2011 year, I wanted to have a final Global Top 125 Genealogy Websites ranking. The current global rankings include a link to the prior ranking, so you can compare for yourself.

First off, let me say how I produced the survey. It is not like Family Tree Magazine’s Top 100 Genealogy Websites which “selects” their favorite 125 websites, by grabbing some from a variety of categories (African-American Genealogy, Jewish Genealogy, Big Genealogy Websites, etc.). Their breadth of “selections” is impressive and they range into reference websites too. Still every one of their selected websites is a valuable resource and the whole list could be used to form your own Genealogy Favorites (Bookmarks).

To arrive at my surveys, last survey and this current survey, I used Alexa.com as my source for rankings. I gathered websites from all over the world and I used the GLOBAL RANKING. This is why we, in the USA may have some disagreements, as Alexa.com also keeps a ranking within the local country. The American rankings for the USA websites tend to be much higher than the foreign regions for us. Likewise, in Canada or the UK, their local genealogy websites tend to rank higher than USA websites because they tend to use their local resources. But in the USA everyone is from somewhere else, so we use USA websites and genealogy websites from around the entire Globe to do our research. Finally, since I use Alexa.com for the rankings, I have to accept that they may not have considered a website that might actually be about genealogy as being about something else, because  the website did not specify or because they described their website as something else. Also Alexa.com does a very poor job of ranking websites outside the USA/Canada/UK unless they write in English. To compensate (modestly), I did add in two Polish genealogical websites and included their global rankings in the survey. After all, this is a blog about Polish Genealogy and other musings. I also added in a few odds & ends, such the the US National Archives (even though not all of the site is not genealogically related  — Alexa does not allow for me to select a sub-site within Archive.gov).

Findings

The new websites, seem to be the ones I added. Some of the older websites no longer had data, so we see some with a ranking of: 99,999,999. This is not an accurate ranking but it must be well beyond 30Million and may now be in the 100Million range and as such, Alexa.com now ignores it or at least does not keep its data.

Many of the top 50 Genealogy websites moved up and moved upwards a good bit. A very few of the Top 50 moved down slightly. So overall, it seems that Genealogy is becoming more popular (than all other websites in general). To give you some feel, this blog that you are reading right now, moved upwards some 6Million places. However, it only moved up four places on the Global Top 125 Genealogy Websites ranking.

In the Top 10, there was very little movement. Most notable, was Fold3.com (formerly Footnote.com), the recent Ancestry.com acquisition moved to number 9 (up from #10) and Eastmans Online Genealogy Network moved up to #10 (from 17). The Top 10 also has one of the new websites (NARA) and MyHeritage.com (#2  — one of those websites that Alexa.com had not counted as a genealogy website, but which we included this time).

Next Year

I will begin dropping website that are ranked at or above 20Million  to allow room for some new websites and to keep the list to 125. Please send me an email about any website that I should investigate for inclusion.

I will publish the future Rankings on or about the 1st of: March, June, September, and December going forward.

Thanks!

 

Social Security Administration (SSA) changed the Death Master File (SSDI); #Genealogy, #Sources

In a nice piece of Genealogical Journalism, Steve Danko (eminent Polish genealogist — see my blogroll on the right), posted about the Social Security Administration (SSA) changing its Death Master File (DMF), aka the Social Security Database or SSDI,  that we use as a major source of genealogical data. Their change, which you can read about in Steve’s blog, took place on November 1st (two days ago) without much fanfare or any fore knowledge. Now as an IT Expert for the last quarter century, I understand the SSA’s rationale — it is a data privacy / legal issue. Its impact is immediate. 4.2 Million records have been deleted from the former 89 Million records (approximately 4.72%) and have vanished because it was “Sourced” from various US States (and not updated from those States’ records). This article is not about discussing the whys and what-nots of the SSA’s decision. This post is about the ramifications of that decision for genealogy.

Two impacts are explicit. 4.2 Million source records disappeared. Going forward, 1 Million records per year will not be loaded (or is it more proper to say, will be in suspense until a source comes forward for that death). Let’s talk about the 4.2 Million records that disappeared 1-November-2011. Some percentage of those records were used in some genealogist’s family research and are documented therein. However, the source is now gone?? If you were diligent and documented the SSA’s DMF (aka SSDI) in your research and that record disappeared, then future researchers will be left wondering what happened. Is this researcher accurate? So,  I propose that everyone use their favorite DMF/SSDI and verify their source is still there (or that it is gone). Furthermore, if it is gone, then I propose a note be entered in your source documentation of this “Event” that happened 11/01/2011 and that a reference back to the state where the death took place (and/or county) be mentioned as the place to get extant documentation and that the previous source documentation was removed by the US Government pursuant to this “Event”.

Apparently, you will need to verify your DMF/SSDI source for ALL deaths from 2002 through to 11/01/2011. Before that , there are no changes that need to be verified. Use your family tree software, pull a report of deaths from 2002-2011 inclusive and work your way through the list.

I think it is still a FACT. The death is still a FACT; but the evidence to support the FACT is now missing unless you have a death certificate or other source for the death date / place. That is why I propose a note be placed into your documentation of your sources. What you know, has NOT changed. How you know of the death has effectively been changed (rug pulled out from underneath you).

There is so much more that could be discussed on this topic.  But this much is my topic and the subject of this post. Good Luck and get started.

–Stanczyk

P.S.

I guess to the litany of investigatory questions, we will now see/hear: …

“What did you know? When did you know it? Do you still know it? “

Dziennik Polski, Detroit, MI – Index, Summary Update #HistoricalNewspaper

Well Stanczyk have been busy for a few days, trying to update the Rootsweb page dedicated to the Dziennik Polski, Detroit, MI Polish Language Ethnic Newspaper.

The Index page with the names has been updated with nearly 7,000 new names / dates from 1936.  The Summary of all Dziennik Polski transcriptions now totals 48,217 of which 26,745 of those names are indexed and the summary page is here.

The Index page is alphabetical by Last Name, First Name, Date of Newspaper (when the name appeared).  Use your browser’s FIND capability (Ctrl-F in Windows, Cmd-F in Mac) to search for a name or just scroll the page.

 

#Polish #Genealogy – Useful Websites … #7 Prussian Army’s Personnel Losses in World War I

Stanczyk was reading  his emails, when he noticed Ceil Wendt-Jensen  has published a useful website on the various Polish / Michigan genealogy mailing lists.

As the Article title suggests this is another database of military personnel from World War I. This one is unlike the ones you’d find at genealodzy.pl . It is however, similar to these databases and even links to the same Fallen in World War I website. But as I said this website/database is different from those.

The aim of the Prussian Army project (link: http://www.genoroots.com/eng/databases.php) is to provide an easy way of searching through the Deutsche Verlustlisten. This is the Prussian Army’s Personnel Losses during World War I .

The authors of the project: Aleksandra Kacprzak  and  Mariusz Zebrowski. They are still updating so check back from time to time. If you click on the “Prussian Army project” link above it will take you to its databases page. There  under the ‘Prussian  Army’ Heading you will see a link ‘Search’. Click on ‘search’ link. You should see the following search form:

Fill in a name and click on the ‘Search’ button. That is it. Should you find an ancestor, you can email them for more info. There is a very modest charge for this follow-on service (the search is free, the detailed info is where the cost is). So if you find someone, then …

e-mail: prusy22@wp.pl. When asking for further information, you must provide the ordinal number (‘L.P.’), the first and last name and the rank of the person in question. The additional information costs 2 Euro per name (=$2.82 as of 10/27/2011), payable via PayPal (to prusy22@wp.pl ). Stanczyk is not affiliated and has no conflict of interest in these entrepreneurial Poles. I did not find any of my ancestors, so I cannot tell you what details you may find. My ancestors were from the Russian-Poland partition (and hence would have been in the Russian army) — keep in mind this Prussian army (not Russian, not Austrian).

Good Luck! Please send me an email with a sample detail if you send for it. Thanks!

Family Search Indexing Tool – #Genealogy – #Polish Radom 1866

Stanczyk wanted to take a moment to say, “Thanks”. You may recall I did my due diligence on the Genealogy Website Rankings. I added my own blog website for reference. At the time of the survey I was a little over 12.8 Million-th most popular website on the Internet. Out of the billions of pages, I thought that was a great start.

For kicks, I went to Alexa.com and inquired if my ranking had changed. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was now the 10.3 Million-th most popular website. That is an improvement of 2.5 Million in about one month !   So I just wanted to say thanks. I am hoping to eventually crack the top 1 Milliion (with perhaps a dream of being in the top 100,000 some day). I asked for your support and I can definitely see that I received it. Thank You very much for lending me your eyes.

I am also looking for people to help me in my volunteer efforts. If you can read Polish (or even Russian, I saw two projects for Ukraine-Kiev church records), then you can join with me on one of two projects: Lublin and/or Radom. I chose Radom as it was close to my grandparent’s ancestral villages (Biechow/Pacanow).

Most projects are for English language records. Of those, many are in the USA, so you could pick your local area and get a local genealogy society or historical society to pitch in. It will provide more data for all of us to research. If you want to thank me, but only read English then perhaps you can pick from a project for: Philadelphia, Buffalo, Toledo, Detroit (or Michigan in general). This is another way you can lend me your eyes and feel good about doing some volunteer work (Random Act of Genealogical Kindness, anyone?).

Two Polish projects open at present.

As I said, I chipped in some effort to read one batch (of 12 birth church records). The records I was given in my first batch were from 1866 in the Radom diocese. This data (index and images) will be free to search from their website: FamilySearch.org (Europe Record Groups) .

Good Luck & Thanks again!

– Stanczyk

#Genealogy #Polish – Searching ELA database, State Archives (Poland)

Stanczyk was visiting the State Archives in Poland website and he explained about the four databases:

• PRADZIAD – For vital records, both civil and religious. Birth,  Marriage, Death and Alegata records.
• SEZAM - A database containing  detailed descriptions of archival holdings preserved by the State Archives and a few related repositories. Some entries are rather lengthy.
  
• IZA – A catalog of all (really slightly more than a quarter of all) fonds, by archive that holds them and indexed by Key Words. It includes the Archive’s contact info (for each fond). I hope they get around to indexing the other 3/4 of fonds.
  
• ELA – A database of all population registers (Censuses, Lists, Indexes, etc.) in Poland’s State Archives.
  

When I wrote about ELA, I said it was not very useful. But I  wanted to correct my errant statement (due to my own misconception about what data they had available). By the descriptions, you can see that PRADZIAD is the most important to a genealogist, but that the ELA database with its population lists can provide additional opportunities to find an ancestor and in some context (a list of soldiers, those being deported, a census, eligible voters list, etc.) for some timeframe. Now let me hasten to add that in the Russian Partition of Poland you are not going to find much in the way of censuses — it seems you can find Russian Empire censuses in all Russian Gubernias, but the ten gubernias in the Polish Kingdom (of the Russian Empire, aka Congress Poland).

Using ELA

This is the English language version of the ELA database (click on link to go to ELA) search form.

You can leave “Town” empty and just search on the “Register’s title” field. Here are some possible search strings (enter Polish words):

1. Listy osób
2. Listy osób uprawnionych do głosowania w guberni kieleckiej
3. listy osób deportowanych z Cesarstwa Rosyjskiego

The first is just the generic, “Lists of People”. All strings must be in Polish (get your Google Translator out). The diacriticals (accents) are not required. The second is the list of eligible voters (in Kielce Gubernia).  The third one is a list of people deported from the Russian Empire.

Leave town blank if you want to search all towns. Fill in town or gmina or powiat (if these are also town names) if you want to limit yourself to an area where you know your ancestors were from. You can also use “Register’s title” if you want to search a whole wojewodztwo (gubernia) and not just the town Kielce.

I have family from the Kielce Gubernia, so I clicked on “more” to find out what FOND and Archive has this data of interest to me (#2 of the list above).

So I should use the contact info to go to the Kielce State Archive and ask for FOND # 59 to see the list of eligible voters in Kielce Gubernia in 1906.

Perhaps I’ll find Elijasz, Leszczynski, Wlecial, and Kedzierski families listed among the eligible voters. From that era, my paternal grandparents are still there  and I expect  that I’d find my great-grandparents too. Now I do not know that I will find more than their names. But perhaps, I’ll get ages and addresses too. Who knows what else (military service, occupation, date of prior elections or number of elections voted — who knows).

There is no actual data or images online. It just a big library catalog file of what you can expect to find, if you visit or hire a genealogist to visit the State Archives.

An Analysis of Biechow LDS Microfilm By Film/Year/Event

Its a rainy day today and Stanczyk threw himself at the unfinished Survey Spreadsheet of his grandmother’s ancestral village: Biechow (old woj./gubernia Kielce). So I made a pot of coffee and I started at the highest level.

My spreadsheet is for each of the years, 1792-1860 inclusive. So there is each year going down the leftside. I have each the three events: Birth, Marriage, Death (Urodzen, Malzenstwo, Zgonow) in separate columns. Please note in some years there are marriage banns (zapowiedz), so you may need to divide by three to get an idea of the actual number of marriages (round up to the next integer). The counts provided are the actual record counts in the church registers. For Biechow, I used LDS microfilm: 936660 .. 936664 inclusive (five film). Finally, I added a column of derived data, “Growth Rate”. This column is simply the number of births minus the number of deaths. Most years there is an increase. However, there are some negatives that show a population decrease. In one year (1831), I know for certainty, that there was a cholera epidemic. Hence a steep decrease in population in 1831. In other years, it may be pestilence/disease or it may be war or something else, but I have no info to explain the negative growth.

[click on read more to see spreadsheet data]  

#Genealogy #News – MyHeritage.com Acquires BackupMyTree

MyHeritage.com who would be the 2nd most popular genealogy website on our survey [see chart below]:

#	Website	Ranking
1	Ancestry.com	1,073
2	myHeritage.com	3,360
3	FindAGrave.com	7,294
4	Familysearch.org	8,331
5	Genealogy.com	11,875
6	GeneaNet	13,684
7	The British Monarchy	53,320
8	Family Tree DNA	57,911
9	RootsWeb	62,662
10	Footnote.org (now fold3)	76,309

is buying BackupMyTree a private genealogy software company from St Louis, MO (at least its server) in the US. For more info on the company, here is an analysis.

#Genealogy #Polish – Notes & Notices; Searching IZA

Stanczyk was visiting the State Archives in Poland and he saw the news…

The State Archive in Wroclaw is celebrating the 200th anniversary of its opening. They published a monograph, “The State Archive in Wrocław 1811-2011. Past and Present “, The main celebration  will take place on 28th of September. If the Archive is 200 years old, then I wonder how old its oldest documents are? Please note if you click on the Union Jack flag (for English) you will miss this announcement which only listed on the Polish language version of the page.

Shoemaker’s Guild

I wanted to search their IZA database to do a “Key Word” search across all State Archive Offices on the topic of Guilds, in particular Shoemaker’s Guild (cechu szewskiego). I have previously written about these guilds before in this blog. I used the ‘cechu’ AND ‘szewc’ as my keywords and I got back seven results:

I circled the Catalog Number (sygnatura) which is a link that can be clicked. When you click on it, you are taken to the specific page for the archive that has the material you need.

The first part of the four parts indicates the archive office (see drop down below). The second is “series”, the third is “sub-series” and the fourth part is file number. Now the material retrieved from the IZA database is in Polish, so if you are not fluent in Polish, you will need your Google Translate webpage.

So when you click on the Catalog number the top of the page should look like …

The address and phone number at the top left. Further down the page it describes the archival file(s) from your search — in Polish!

The initial database search screen also has a drop-down field that maps the State Archive Offices to the number (the first part of the Catalog Number). You may want to limit results to a specific office if you are only searching in a specific archive office when you visit Poland.

So you see at the bottom of my drop down that 32 = Krakow State Archive in the Nowy Targ office. The 32 was the first part of my catalog number: 32/1/0/64 .

You can click these images at the left to see a large size image that will be easier to read.

In terms of vocabulary, the series + the sub-series (parts 2 & 3) are the FOND. The fourth part, the file number, is also called ‘OPIS‘.

You will see these words used with the other databases, in particular, the PRADZIAD database that has the vital records (church registers -or- civil office records).

It is this jester’s hope that this info can help you navigate the State Archives of Poland’s three databases (also a fourth database, ELA which is not very useful):

• PRADZIAD
• SEZAM
• IZA

Preparing for 1940 Census

1940 US Census Form

If you go to Steve Morse’s One-Step Website or you go to the US National Archives, you will see that as right now you have 198 days (and 17+ hours) to prepare for the 1940 US Census (which arrives 72 years after census, to protect privacy). This time it will be on April 2nd (2012).

Are you preparing? Ancestry.com says they will give us free access to the 1940 census (for a while). The last time (10 years ago) there were no indexes at the release and you had to do a lot of brute force searching page-by-page through an Enumeration District (ED), so you had to know the whereabouts of your family and be able to use the ED’s boundary cross streets to figure out which ED you needed to go page-by-page through. “Supposedly”, Ancestry.com says the indexes will be there (all of them?  on day 1?). I hope they are correct and I hope this year they do not use foreign people to index the names — which was quite a snafu the last time and of course they were re-indexed (always time/money to do it a second time, but not enough time/money to do it right the first time — Stanczyk was a consultant too long and saw this again and again in many industries).

How can you prepare?

• Locate a 1940 (or 1939 or 1941) City Directory if you know the street address and verify that family were there
• If they are somewhere else, then you will need to use SteveMorse.org and his Census tools to change the new address into a 1940 ED
• Determine the ED ahead of time in case there are no indexes or the indexes are BAD.
• No City Directory available? SteveMorse has a census tool to convert the 1930 ED into a 1940 ED [assuming your family stayed at the same address]
• Figure out ahead of time some novel misspellings of the surnames your are searching for in case the indexer or the Census taker messed up your ancestor’s name.
• DO NOT lock yourself into assuming they are in the same state (or county or city).
• At first try with many details filled in, then relax a field at a time until you find your family -or- you can go in the opposite direction if your name is not common and start with the fewest fields filled in (usually just surname) and add in fields if you need to cut down the number of results.
• Use an address from any document prior to 1940, (ex. Naturalization Forms) if you do not have any idea where they live in 1940. Use the latest document’s address that you have to guess at an ED [again using SteveMorse.org].
• If the above fails try and find the address, the earliest as possible  after the 1940 Census and see if they were. The Old Man’s WWII Draft might fit the bill for most people.

Those are my tips. Any other tips you are using? Then email this jester or make a comment, please.  Prepare as if you were going to a Library or an archive or the Family History Library.

This is a War Census, so I do not know how they dealt with the many households that had soldiers away at war. Were soldiers listed on the Census or not?

General Info & 1940 Census Questions

Many good questions on this census, including …

1. Residence, April 1, 1935
2. For all women who are or have been married:  Number of children ever born (do not include stillbirths).
3. Veterans: War or military service.

Musing about the Cholera Epidemic of 1831

I frequently browse my blog’s web analytics (who refers, what they searched on, etc.). I noticed that someone landed on my blog searching about Cholera in the Biechow parish (in Piestrzec to be specific).

First let me take a moment to pay due to Rosemary Chorzempa(Toledo Genealogical Society, author) whose book, Polish Roots, was my first genealogy book and from whence I began the study of this craft. I still refer back to it — a real classic. I bring her book up because it has a timeline in it and one of the entries is 1831 – “First[sic Second] Asiatic Cholera Epidemic“. This is when Cholera came to the villages: Biechow, Piestrzec, Wojcza, Chrzanow, etc. Besides the obvious HIGH death rates, we also saw low birth rates too.

Stanczyk has mentioned this before, but one of my ancestors, Marcin Heliasz, age 50 (b. about 1781) was listed as death number 232 (the last one) and Marcin and number 231 did not even have death dates or witnesses. I surmise that the parish priest as he visited on or before the Feast of Epiphany to inscribe the door lintel with the three wise men’s initials (K,M,B) he found these two villagers dead. Their record is after the other records and the end of year notation the priest usually makes.

The number of deaths were between 49-88 (from 1816-1827). Then 1828- 122 deaths, 1829- 149 deaths, 1830- 142 deaths, perhaps these might have been due to a growth spurt, but in 1831- 232 deaths (and cholera was noted in the church registers). In 1832- 80, 1833- 61, 1834- 71. So we see a return to normal death rates of the early 1820′s. This may also reflect the low birth rate in 1831- just 46. Typically, the birth rate exceeds the death rate by a handful (or a couple dozen in times of plenty) in this parish.

So for the year 1831 with only 46 births and then 232 deaths meant this parish had a net drop in population of 186 in ONE year! If we assume/project from the Parish Censuses (at the top of this blog) that Biechow’s parish population was between 1800-1900 people, then in one year they lost about 10% of the people ! Perhaps half a million Europeans died during this epidemic. In many countries there were actually Cholera Riots — as people were suspicious of their governments.

For more information on epidemics or Cholera Epidemics see Wikipedia.

#Genealogy #Website #Rankings – Revisited With A Documented Methodology

Stanczyk got one comment recently. It was the first one I ever deleted. It was rude and was in reference to my rant at Genealogy Rankings posted by EOGN. Eastman, had just reposted some blogger’s effort without checking the results (a genealogical mistake — which we all make at some time or other).

Stanczyk, however is a natural skeptic. So when I looked at the results and they differed from my experience … WILDLY. I knew they were wrong or at least that the methodology employed was flawed and the info was misinformation. So I searched for another more credible ranking — which I did find and repost myself. This info was more representative of the real world and while a methodology was also not documented for this, I did cite my source of data.

However, bothered I was by my comment that I deleted for its obvious bias and rudeness, I had to admit I needed to study this and document my methodology. The commenter proffered that ALEXA.com be the source. So I obliged. I used Alexa.com and made the following search for data:

• All countries (hint hint)
• Society->Genealogy [the topic]
• All languages (although come on, Genealogy is only genealogy in English)
• All rankings
• No filter
• I eliminated results without any numbers (how could they be ranked)
• I added a handful off the top of my head to see where they fit
• I used Global Ranking (since I wanted all countries/languages)

My Additions

I added FamilySearch.org,  I knew this must be big! I added Genealodzy.pl which most people probably do not know (unless they read my blog), because it was a credible Genealogical Society Website (and probably not the most popular genealogy website in Poland). I added Footnote (now Fold3) — I was sure this was huge too. I also added CastelGarden, SteveMorse, and my own humble blog for reference — I am sure many other Polish Genealogy blogs are higher ranked. My additions are  bolded and in RED.

I could not compare my results to his results because he used the URL instead of the name so I am not certain which of mine are his and vice-versa. Also since we did these studies at different times, our results differ slightly in numbers. I am also puzzled as to how he got so many .UK or .CA websites. These did not get returned by my Alexa.com search — perhaps he limited his methodology  or added in many websites that he knew. I think Alexa.com needs to return a consistent set of websites so rankings can be compared. I also think that some websites need to describe or META tag their website better so sites like Alexa.com and its competitors can do a better job of collecting statistics. I think GENEALOGY as a topic is MUCH more popular than Alexa.com shows. Also, perhaps Alexa.com data is NOT reproducible.  So maybe my critique of EOGN is unwarranted and the Anglo-Celtic blog is also correct (as I am too). That would not be a good thing for Alexa.com. I wish other competitors in Web Analytics would publish a Genealogy/Family History Ranking study. I hope they include genealogia or other foreign renditions of the English ‘Genealogy’ so we can get a true World-Wide study. I also question whether Ancestry.com (and Ancestry.ca, Ancestry.uk, Ancestry.de, etc) should be separate or combined.

When you view the rankings, the lower the number, the better. It means there are that many websites (-1) that are more popular. So for example, my blog that you are reading has 12.8 Million other websites (like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.) ahead of me in popularity in the WORLD. Pay close attention to my additions, they are in bold/red and for the most part are near to the top.

Genealogy Websites top 113 (I am number 106 — come-on readers)

#	Website	Ranking
1	Ancestry.com	1,073
2	Familysearch.org	8,331
3	Genealogy.com	11,875
4	GeneaNet	13,684
5	The British Monarchy	53,320
6	Family Tree DNA	57,911
7	RootsWeb	62,662
8	Footnote.org (now fold3)	76,309
9	JewishGen	85,873
10	What’s New in Genealogy Today	116,942
11	Cyndi’s List of Genealogy Resources on the Internet	124,819
12	TribalPages	125,404
13	Stevemorse.org	137,026
14	Eastman’s Online Genealogy News	138,037
15	Access Genealogy	140,165
16	GenoPro	164,723
17	World Vital Records	186,504
18	Genealodzy.pl	187,329
19	One Great Family	203,284
20	Polish Genealogical Society of America	203,550
21	ProGenealogists, Inc.	230,037
22	Genealogy and Family History Data at DistantCousin.com	240,451
23	AncientFaces	271,220
24	Kindred Konnections	273,644
25	National Genealogical Society	300,259
26	Family Tree Magazine	304,602
27	Family Research	317,401
28	Legacy Family Tree	334,708
29	British Royal Family History	337,957
30	Curious Fox	450,455
31	museumsusa.org	478,027
32	Olive Tree Genealogy	478,202
33	GenealogyLinks.net	526,395
34	NCGenWeb	529,784
35	Family Tree Guide	540,734
36	Oxford Ancestors	540,969
37	Irish Genealogy	542,221
38	RootsMagic	546,245
39	CousinConnect.com	556,154
40	Family Tree Circles	560,472
41	Monmouth County Library	664,876
42	Castlegarden.org	736,651
43	Avotaynu	790,666
44	Genealogy Search Engine	794,553
45	Genealogy Search Engine	794,553
46	Genealogy Articles, Tips & Research Guides	867,921
47	CensusDiggins.com	903,350
48	Genealogy Blog	981,796
49	Reunion	988,538
50	Obituary Links Page	1,080,372
51	Dear Myrtle	1,084,424
52	Dead Fred’s Photo Genealogy Archive	1,149,953
53	GeneaLinks	1,168,516
54	Ultimate Family Tree	1,527,831
55	Holmes, Doug	1,569,874
56	RoyaList Online	1,608,515
57	Kerchner	1,624,302
58	phpmyfamily – Genealogical website builder	1,635,669
59	Jewish Web Index	1,713,993
60	Couch: USA	1,766,283
61	The Ohio Genealogical Society	1,792,377
62	Board for Certification of Genealogists	1,854,544
63	Ancestral Quest	1,856,546
64	GenealogyPro.com	1,892,255
65	Scot Roots	2,170,754
66	Genealogy Magazine	2,175,330
67	Black Sheep Ancestors	2,243,157
68	Eneclann	2,298,226
69	Sephardim.com	2,456,171
70	Odessa German-Russian Genealogical Library	2,531,031
71	Journal of Genetic Genealogy	2,585,838
72	Genealogical Journeys In Time	2,780,736
73	Colonial Ancestors	2,932,587
74	Genealogy Register	3,016,245
75	The Genealogue	3,033,136
76	Winslow	3,189,607
77	Family Chronicle Magazine	3,248,384
78	GEDitCOM	3,527,586
79	Gen Source	3,718,359
80	Brother’s Keeper	3,788,856
81	Surname Site	3,854,351
82	GenealogySpot.com	4,028,763
83	GenSmarts	4,070,308
84	Palatines to America	4,161,788
85	Looking 4 Kin Genealogy Links and Chat	4,650,889
86	Genealogical Forum of Oregon	5,079,038
87	Helm’s Genealogy Toolbox	5,229,636
88	Family Origins	5,240,600
89	Genealogy Research Associates, Inc	5,416,307
90	Surname Genealogy Archive	5,462,264
91	Spansoft – Kith and Kin Genealogy Software	5,477,484
92	Historic Genealogy in New England	5,550,789
93	Ancestor Genealogy Photo Archive	5,999,968
94	Genealogy Roots Blog	6,048,790
95	Lineages, Inc	6,852,004
96	Surname Guide	7,252,646
97	Debrett Ancestry Research	8,431,123
98	Geneabios	8,649,736
99	MudCreek Software	9,461,331
100	Family Tree Connection	9,693,244
101	Association of Scottish Genealogists and Record Agents	9,785,665
102	nbgs.ca	10,632,352
103	Scottish Roots	10,912,588
104	Georgia Genealogical Society	11,944,069
105	Rogue Valley Genealogical Society	12,287,030
106	mikeeliasz.wordpress.com (Stanczyk)	12,805,138
107	Genealogy Software News	15,592,001
108	Wheelock	20,518,710
109	FamilyWebHost	20,769,903
110	Genealogy Home Page	23,241,140
111	Root Cellar – Sacramento Genealogical Society	25,363,263
112	Upper Canada Genealogy	26,691,115
113	GenDesigner	26,900,547

It is clear that Great Britain is much more genealogy crazy than the USA. If I were to do this again, I would probably go through my favorites/bookmarks and add in a few blogs (Polish Genealogy), Polish Genealogical Societies (US & Poland), FindAGrave.com, Interment.net, and Everett Genealogy Magazine. What would you add?

–Stanczyk

#Jewish #Genealogy – A Continuing Homage to Moja żona – Biechow 1820

I am continuing my efforts to retrieve/extract the Jewish records from the Catholic parish of Biechow  (an homage to moja dobra żona, Tereza) during the years when the Catholic Church was ordered to act the civil registration authority for all parties/religions.  My previous postings were for the years 1810-1819  inclusive.

These are the Jewish Births from 1820 recorded in Biechow parish. Ergo, this posting brings us upto: 1810-1820 inclusive. The prior post is here .

As per usual, I give permission for all Jewish data that I have been posting to be included in the JRI project. In 1820, there were four Jewish births out of a total of 111 births recorded in the Biechow parish. That works out to be 3.6% of the total.

Year: 1820      Priest: Jozef Parzelski         Gmina: Biechow     Powiat: Stopnica     Departement: Krakow      111 Total Births     LDS Microfilm#: 936660

Record #8     Date: 1/24/1820

Father: Szmul  Abramowicz,  Handlarz, Age 30, Piestrzec   House #77 (recorded as Karol Jaworski’s house)

Mother: Wiktula z Berkow, age 36

Baby: girl Chanka

Witnesses:  Leyb Berkowicz, Handlarz, age 26 Piestrzec & Judka Moskowicz, Handlarz,  <no age>, Piestrzec

—-

Record #13     Date: 2/5/1820

Father: Leyb  Szlamkiewicz,  Szkolnik, Age 50, Wojcza  House #2

Mother: Faydosz z Herszkow, age 30

Baby: boy Szlama

Witnesses:  Walsa  Jaskowicz, Pakiarz, age 40 Biechow & Mendla Moskowicz, Pakiarz,  <no age>, Wojcza

—-

Record #54     Date: 6/30/1820

Father: Mendel  Moskowicz,  Pakiarz, Age 36, Wojcza  House #64

Mother: Serla z Lewkowiczow, age 36

Baby: girl Rucka

Witnesses:  Moska  Szymolowicz, Pakiarz, age 36 Wola Biechowska & Zelman Majorkiewicz, Pakiarz,  <no age>, Biechow

—-

Record #79     Date: 8/2/1820

Father: Zelman Steyberg,  Handlarz, Age 29, Biechow  House #46

Mother: Malka z Jaskowiczow, age 24

Baby: boy Herszla

Witnesses:  Jaska Wolfowicz, Pakiarz,  44, Biechow & Moska  Szymolowicz, Pakiarz, <no age>,  Wola Biechowska

–Stanczyk

#Jewish #Genealogy – A Continuing Homage to Moja żona – Biechow 1819

I am continuing my efforts to retrieve/extract the Jewish records from the Catholic parish of Biechow during the years when the Catholic Church was ordered to act the civil registration authority.  My previous postings were for the years 1810-1818. inclusive.

These are the Jewish Births from 1819 recorded in Biechow parish. Ergo, this posting brings us upto: 1810-1819 inclusive. The prior post is here .

Before I begin, I have been watching the evolution of names in the church register and I thought I would offer a few observations. First off, I am a gentile genealogist. So my treatment of Jewish names as rendered in the Polish language with its complex grammar is suspect — but I am learning.

So earlier I have been struggling with the surname: Golbarka or Goberka (also rendered as Golbarkow). First off, the assumption of ‘bark’ vs ‘berk’ due to poor writing and page condition is definitely off. I now know the name is Golberg (or we would probably render in 20th century English as Goldberg/Goldburg). I think I will keep the Golberkow ending as this is the grammatical construct for referring to the family as when writing the woman’s maiden name.

Notice I have decided to drop the ending ‘a’ on men’s names — which I am also thinking I should do on many first names as well, but my lack of experience with Jewish names of the 19th century Poland causes me to wonder how to apply what William Hoffman calls, ‘The Chopping Block’ to both first and last names when Jewish. So forgive me when I write: Moska, Mendla and Herszla(which in 20th century America I’d write as Herschel as in Herschel Walker). I know I need to drop the ending ‘a’, but I am not certain as to how to write those names, so I leave them as I find them for someone more expert than I to correct. My apologies in advance.

We see three births out of 104 total births. That represents a population of about 2.88% of the total parish population. So we are in the range of 3% +/- 0.25% which seems to be what I have seen in previous years. Again realize I am trying to give an in idea of the Jewish population in proportion to the entire population of the parish in (not intimating that the Jewish peoples are participants in the church parish activities). The 3% represents a modest growth from the 2.6% in Biechow census from 1787. [See Parish Census at the top of this blog]. According to that same census, the entire set of parishes in the surrounding area was about 6.4% Jewish.

My reason for doing this assessment is to convince the JRI, that it should at some point visit all Catholic parishes to pull out the remaining Jewish people without looking at the amount of effort required to yeild such tiny results. We know they are there  — do not leave them behind. After my Social Network Analysis, I am thinking that these non-shtetl Jews are a kind of glue between the surrounding towns/shtetls.

The assessment also shows that Jews and Catholics lived side by side and not segregated [in this very rural area very near to the Austria-Poland partition]. Now this may only be true in Poland and not the rest of “The Pale of Settlement” as defined by the Czars of the Russian Empire. According to Wikipedia,  Jews (of the Pale) were not forbidden by the Czars from rural areas until 1882.

Year: 1819      Priest: Jozef Parzelski         Gmina: Biechow     Powiat: Stopnica     Departement: Krakow      104 Total Births     LDS Microfilm#: 936660

Record #38     Date: 4/17/1819 [about 1 month earlier than the 5/15/1819 record date]

Father: Mosiek Golberg,  Arendarz, Age 34, Wojcza   House #60

Mother: Fraydla z Jakow, age 32

Baby: girl Cyra

Witnesses:  Moska Samulowicz, kaczmarz, age 36 Biechow & Mendla Abramowicz, pakiarz,  <no age>, Wojcza

—-

Record #53     Date: 7/7/1819

Father: Nat Belel,  Mlynarz, Age 25, Wojcza   House #3 (listed as Jozef Pawelec ‘s house)

Mother: Rucha  z Golberkow, age 22

Baby: girl Eydla

Witnesses:  Mendla Abramowicz, pakiarz,  28, Wojcza   &  Moska Szmulowicz, pakiarz, <no age> Wola Biechowska

—-

Record #104     Date: 12/23/1819

Father: Jasek Wolf,  pakiarz, Age 45, Biechow   House #48

Mother: Blima  z Chaymowicz, age 38

Baby: boy Herszla

Witnesses:  Zalman Stemberk(Stemberg??), pakiarz,  28, Biechow   &  Berka Chaymowicz, Handlarz, <no age>  Biechow

–Stanczyk

#Genealogy #Website #Rankings – 2011

Stanczyk just read EOGN (Eastman Online Genealogy Network) and could not believe what he read. So I followed the source and read that and still did not believe. So I checked further – because I could NOT locate the benchmark/methodology of the survey which is NOT credible. I  then Googled and found this source here:  http://www.progenealogists.com/top50genealogy2011.htm .  I certainly would agree with these rankings as these are what I use most often throughout the year.

Perhaps I am not Canadian as the source EOGN quoted was and perhaps the methodology was geographic based (in Canada, with UK add-in). Dick Eastman should do some extra checking rather than just re-broadcasting bogus news. That is my expectation for EOGN. Read the EOGN blog post that  I am railing against here: http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2011/09/genealogy-site-rankings.html

Certainly if I surveyed Polish Genealogy websites, my list would look differently too.

Here is the only credible 2011 Rankings:

Rank    Website                     Coverage/Content

1. Ancestry.com $ – Ancestry.com is the leading genealogical data site, and includes articles, instruction, and reference help.
2. MyHeritage.com - Focuses on genealogy community building and networking.
3. FindAGrave.com - This database of 57 million cemetery inscriptions adds about a million per month and often includes tombstone photos.
4. FamilySearch.org - This major data website sponsored by the LDS Church includes the IGI, census records, the library’s catalog and a growing collection of historical records from throughout the world, along with instruction and reference help. (4>5>5)
5. Genealogy.com $ – A major data site, includes family trees, instruction and reference help. (5>2>4)
6. Geni.com – Free, with the world’s largest collaborative family. (31>8>18)
7. MyFamily.com - Hosts family websites for sharing photos, genealogy, and more. (33>5>5)
8. FamilyLink.com $ - One of the most popular FaceBook applications helps people identify and network with their family and search billions of records. (2>80>72)
9. RootsWeb.com – One of the largest, free, user-contributed data sites, includes 575 million names in family trees, also instruction and reference help. (6>4>2)
10. AncestorHunt.com – Free genealogy search engine linking to free data. (11>11>12)
11. AccessGenealogy.com – Millions of names in 250,000 pages, along with links to free data; especially useful for Native American information, and some data. (13>14>13)
12. SearchForAncestors.com - Interactive directory of free genealogy websites and data. (12>19>21)
13. GenealogyBank.com $ – 1 billion exclusive records from 4500 newspapers and historical books. (19>31>41)
14. USGWArchives.net – A large collection of free data, arranged by state and searchable across the entire collection. (8>not ranked)
15. CyndisList.com – The best subject catalog of genealogy webpage links. (14>17>15)
16. Interment.net - Transcribed and indexed cemetery inscriptions. (16>16>16)
17. OneGreatFamily.com$ – A family tree sharing and collaboration website. (9>11>9)
18. GenealogyToday.com - Includes instruction, reference articles, and some unique data collections. (10>12>11)
19. SurnameWeb.org – A collection of surname website links; online since 1996. (48>62>26)
20. FindMyPast.co.uk$ – (Back in) 650 million British records of many types [formerly FindMyPast.com]. (57>46>50)
21. Geneanet.org - (Back in) A European collection of 400 million names in family trees, community, and submitted records. (58>42>36)
22. DeathIndexes.com - Lists of links to United States death records, by state. (23>25>31)
23. Linkpendium.com – Nine million genealogy links organized by state/county and surname. (24>24>35)
24. EllisIsland.org - Database of 24 million New York passenger arrivals that is free to search. Actual passenger list images can be printed or purchased. (15>20>14)
25. GeneBase.com - A DNA ancestry cataloguing project with 675,000 users. (21>24>24)
26. GenealogyTrails.com - Five year old site with free U.S. data contributed by volunteers. (25>35>NR)
27. GenealogyBuff.com – A free genealogy search site with hundreds of data sources. (27>134>NR)
28. FamilyTreeMaker.com - Homepage for Ancestry.com’s genealogical software. (28>21>20)
29. USGennet.org - Historical and genealogical web hosting service. (18>15>17)
30. WorldVitalRecords.com $ – The data collection provided by Family Link, with over a billion records, as well as instruction and reference help. (17>13>10)
31. FamilyTreeDNA.com - DNA testing service focused upon family history test types. (20>26>27)
32. Footnote.com $ – In conjunction with the U.S. National Archives, Footnote offers data, original records images, and more. (37>9>8)
33. KindredKonnections.com $ – Grassroots created data site with compiled family trees, and some extracted records. (29>22>19)
34. CensusFinder.com - Links to free census records. (22>29>40)
35. Archives.com $ – A major new subscription data site, launched in July 2009 and already with more than a billion names. (41>New)
36. DistantCousin.com - An online archive of genealogy records and images of historical documents. (34>23>22)
37. FamilyHistory101.com - Less than four years old and full of instruction and guidance for genealogists. (38>47>107)
38. ThePeerage.com – A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe. (44>53>58)
39. TribalPages.com - Family trees hosting with 300,000 members and 80 million names. (35>28>25)
40. RootsChat.com – (New) Free family history messaging forum with almost 3 million mostly UK messages. (57>54>NR)
41. HeritageQuestOnline.com $ – Census, PERSI (the periodical index), books, all free to you at many libraries. (32>39>39)
42. NewspaperObituaries.net – (New) A directory of obituary databases and archives on the web. (91>84>126)
43. AncientFaces.com - Share genealogy research, community pages, family photos & records more for free. (46>48>38)
44. JewishGen.org - Jewish, reference, instruction, coordination, and databases. (26>32>28)
45. PoliticalGraveyard.com - Comprehensive source of U.S. political biography that tells where many dead politicians are buried. (36>33>34)
46. CousinConnect.com - A large free queries website. (39>27>23)
47. DAR.org - Site of the largest lineage society; includes their library catalog and 32 million name index. (43>49>67)
48. FamilyTreeMagazine.com – (New) Website for popular magazine that includes shopping, links, and research tools. (55>67>47)
49. AmericanAncestors.org $ – (New) The new name for the NEHGS website and their 3,000 databases.  (73>89>87)
50. GenealogyLinks.net – 50,000 links to free sites, arranged by state and county. (53>50>43)

Dropping out of the top 50:

• GenWed.com- Online marriage records, where to order, some indexes, and more. (42>43>42)
• ObitLinksPage.com- State-by-state directory of obituaries and obituary resources. (47>not ranked)
• Genuki.org.uk- Large collection of genealogical information pages for England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man. (50>34>32)
• GenoPro.com- Genealogy software that produces genograms (40>37>53)
• US-Census.org- Census abstracts (U.S. GenWeb Census Project) (49>45>37)
• Genealogy.org– (New) A listing of 400+ registered websites, ranked weekly by hits. (45>69>56)
• FamilyTiez.com– (New) A site where families can establish their own pages to share news, photos, events and genealogy with each other. (30>not ranked)

Send Me your  top 10 Polish Genealogy Websites. This will be a non-scientific survey and I will only publish my findings if I can get 36 emails and I will add in my own top 10 Polish Genealogy sites too. Do not include from the above “generic” genealogy sites. I will allow only Polish (or German, Russian, Austrian, Slavic, Czech, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Jewish, or Hungarian genealogy websites that have ties to Poland).

Email your top 10 to: Stanczyk Email

#Jewish #Genealogy – A Continuing Homage to Moja żona – Biechow 1818

I am continuing my efforts to retrieve/extract the Jewish records from the Catholic parish of Biechow during the years when the Catholic Church was ordered to act the civil registration authority.  My previous postings were for the years 1810-1817. inclusive.

These are the Jewish Births from 1818 in Biechow parish. Ergo, this posting brings us upto: 1810-1818 inclusive. The prior post is here .

Year: 1818      Priest: Jozef Parzelski         Gmina: Biechow     Powiat: Stopnica     Departement: Krakow      85 Total Births

Record #3     Date: 1/1/1818

Father: Mosiek Merzdal, Handlarz, Age 28, Wojcza   House #50

Mother: Sorli z Lewkow, age 24

Baby: boy Herczyk

Witnesses:  Jaska Jaskowicz, pakiarz, age 42 Wojcza & Moska Szymolewicz, kaczmarz,  <no age>, Biechow

—-

Record #12     Date: 2/1/1818

Father: Jasek Jaskowicz, Pakiarz, Age 42, Wojcza   House #2

Mother: Estera z Nutow, age 36

Baby: girl Ruskla

Witnesses:  Moska Golbarka, Arendarz, age 34 Wojcza & Moska Szymolewicz, szynkarz,  <no age>, Biechow

—-

Record #15     Date: 2/14/1818

Father: Mosiek Szymolewicz, Szynkasz, Age 36, Biechow   Biechow Inn #77

Mother: Setla z Slorkow, age 36

Baby: girl Esterka

Witnesses:  Moska Golbarka, arendarz, age 34 Wojcza & Simela Komnan, kaczmarzek,  56, Jastrzebica (parish Stopnica)

So we have 3 births in 1818 out of 84 total births, which is 3.6% of birth population. Also note that Mosiek Szymolewicz was in all three records with no age given in the first two records where he was a witness, finally we get his age as the father in the third birth record. Also note the visiting witness from Jastrzebica village which is identified as being in the Stopnica parish.

As usual, I give the JRI permission to use these Jewish records in their databases [if they ever get around to visiting my blog].

I can quickly pick out the Jewish records out  as they hand-write their names in Hebrew script. It is possible that my using this method may cause me to miss a Jewish record if the record was not signed with Hebrew [although let me hasten to add that very few records are signed, maybe another 4-5 beyond the Hebrew signatures and most of those other signatures I recognize as Catholic families that I have in my family tree.]

#Polish #Genealogy #Blog – Stanczyk Thanks His Visitors …

Visitors Last 60 Days - Cumulative

About two months ago, on the 4th of July, Stanczyk decided to put a counter on the blog/website to see who you, my gentle readers are. Thank you for coming and for your emails — please keep them coming.

Since the blog is written in English, with a smattering of Polish, or Russian or even Latin, I suspected the English speaking world (US, CA, GB, AU) would be the majority. As you can see by the flags of the world and the numbers besides the flags,  representing yourselves, that is true.

Since much of the subject matter is Polish/Slavic genealogy based, then I was not surprised to find Poland my second largest country of interested viewers — Dziękuję bardzo . Indeed my thanks to all of the Central/Eastern Europeans from: PL, DE, RU, CZ, AT, UA, BY, LT and even HR — you know who you are.

I am pleased with Canada since many Polish genealogists or genealogists in general  who trace the Polonian diaspora came through Canada, as was the case in some of Stanczyk’s family tree. I am pleasantly surprised by the Nordic nations (SE, NO, DK), but of course there was much intermingling with the Polish peoples in a time long ago, including Mieszko I ‘s grandson Canute (aka Cnut the Great) who went on to great influence in the Nordic countries and finally in the United Kingdom itself.

As for the rest of the world, I am glad you came too. I thank you for your polite inquisitiveness.

I would urge all interested parties who blog, to use the Flag Counter — why not? I think the experiment was a success. I now know I am reaching my target audience (and a bit more besides) globally.

You can find the flag on the Map pages or the Dziennik Polski (Detroit, MI) pages. Click on the flags and it will take you the Flags Counter website where you can get your own.

Thanks for being a part of my experiment. For my part, I think I will keep it going to see how many Flags of the world I can collect or how many US states (32 so far) or Canadian provinces (5) I can wrangle in.

 

Your Host,

–Stanczyk

Earth Status – Blowin’ – Blogging About Hurricane Irene

9:50 am Saturday Discovery.com allows you to track Hurricane #Irene. Watch for Periodic updates to this article to chronicle this storm from Stanczyk’s point of view. Today we should all crowd-source the chronicling of Irene, since somewhere between 10% and 20% of the American populace will be affected by Irene’s weather pattern. Are you game?

Hurricane Irene 2011 First Bands near Philadelphia

9:50 am Saturday

Satellite Photo -

This indicates the first bands are arriving in the Philadelphia area.

0950 Saturday

9:50 am Saturday Outside Window Photo.

No Rain

Wind 4mph

Humidity 95%;

Temp 75 degrees Fahrenheit

11:52 am  Saturday The Satellite photo shows that the outer band has reached Philadelphia.

Well not much of a perceptible change outside  from two hours ago, maybe a bit darker. I am hoping to determine the radar maps accuracy relative to me and my readings.

No Rain

Wind 4mph

Humidity 87%;

Temp 77 degrees Fahrenheit

Hurricane Irene 2011 First Bands over Philadelphia

Since Donna P. from the Blog, “Whats Past is Prologue” raised the question of media over-hype; Let me add a note.

Yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer published a graphic showing #Irene ‘s projected route/timeline. I noted it said, Landfall (pretty close to where the actual landfall actually occurred) would happen at 14:00. The actual time of landfall was 07:30. The projected arrival was to be a day later in Philly. So I will see whether it arrives in Philly at 07:30 Sunday or not. All times are Eastern US timezone.

1152 Saturday

12:50 Saturday  Previously in my comment to Donna P. I had said I’d compare to Hurricane Hugo (which happened in 1989). But I meant Hurricane Floyd in 1999 is the one in my mind that I wanted to compare.

From wikipedia in 1999 Hurricanes, we see that Floyd came ashore in ” Cape Fear as a Category 2 storm on September 16. It returned to the ocean near Norfolk, Virginia, and traveled up the coasts of the Delmarva Peninsula and New Jersey as a tropical storm. It passed over Long Island and into New England.^[32] Floyd caused record rainfall across the east coast, with Wilmington, North Carolina, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, setting 24-hour rainfall records of 15 in (380 mm) and 6.63 in (168 mm) in respectively. Portions of New England had rainfall totals nearing 11 in (280 mm). Floyd generated 9 to 10 ft (2.7 to 3.0 m) storm surges across North Carolina. There are 57 deaths directly blamed on Floyd, 56 in the United States and one on Grand Bahama. Most of the deaths were due to freshwater flooding in North Carolina. Floyd was one of the costliest hurricanes on record, with an estimated $4.5 billion (1999 USD; $5.93 billion 2011 USD) in damage.”

For comparison, we look at the Discovery.com website and we see the a prediciton on cost damages has already been made:

“Kinetic Analysis Corp., a company that does computer modeling of predicted storm damage, predicted on Friday[8/26/2011] that Irene would cause $5-10 billion in damages, based on the latest available weather data. “

So it would appear that a Floyd comparison may be a sound benchmark to compare with afterall.

Hurricane Irene 2011 1447 Satellite

14:47 Saturday Well the rain started about an hour and five minutes ago (while I was at the supermarket    ). It was busy and many items were sold out. The supermarket manager was heard saying what the contingencies would be if the power went out to his subordinate — so we are all preparing for #Irene.

The Satellite now shows the forward band extended out past Philly and out all the way to Harrisburg — so I guess the rain should be happening (as I indicated the rain started about 13:42).

1447 Saturday

My outside image is the last I will now be able to take from outside. The remainder will have be shot through windows.

Rain Total: 0.03″ [inches]

Wind: 6mph[variable 0-6mph]

Humidity: 98%

Temp: 75 degrees Fahrenheit

1800 Saturday Satellite

18:00 Saturday If you look closely at the 18:00 Satellite image you will see that the entire Eastern Seabord from North Carolina to Connecticut is now covered by Hurricane #Irene or its bands of rain/wind.You can now see all Harrisburg again so the cone up here seems narrower while more completely covered. In fact the bands are now indistinct — just seems to be one great big mass of rain — less wind then in most of our thunderstorms.

Here by me the region has 5 flood warnings and one Tropical Storm Warning (Irene is supposed to be slower up here and this far inland from the coast) so it will lose Hurricane status when it does arrive here.

Well the weather outside has not changed much — still rainy. The Temps are fluctuating up/down a degree or two.

No image of the outside this time [same as before but darker as we approach dusk].

Rain Total: 0.30″ [inches]

Wind: 2mph[fairly steady]

Humidity: 100%

Temp: 72 degrees Fahrenheit although it had dropped as far as 71.

19:34 Saturday No new  Satellite image. Hurricane #Irene is moving slowly. It is about Newport News, VA (partially offshore. Here by me the region now has 6 flood warnings and one Tropical Storm Warning .

Darkness has descended and the weather outside has changed only slightly — still rainy. The Temps are at projected low (71 degrees).

Rain Total: 0.72″ [inches]; Wow quite a change in 90+ minutes it more than doubled.

Wind: 1-12mph[variable, mostly 5-10mph]

Humidity: 100%

Temp: 71 degrees Fahrenheit.

21:21 Saturday No new  Satellite image. Hurricane #Irene is moving slowly. It is about Newport News, VA (partially offshore. Here by me the region still has the same 6 flood warnings and one Tropical Storm Warning .

Rain Total: 1.12″ [inches]; In less than 60 minutes we added 0.4″ of rain to the total.

Wind: 4-15mph[most of evening we have had gust in 20+ mph range]. Now we have mostly double-digits wind speed though it seems awfully variable. Data Collector is not realtime so I have not seen the gust speeds, but I have heard them outside.

Humidity: 100%

Temp: 70 degrees Fahrenheit. 1 degree below earlier predictions.

Next update tomorrow morning.

04:19 Sunday No new  Satellite image.  Too early for that rigamarole. Lats night, shortly after sign-off we lost power twice in quick succession, both outages very short in duration. Kudos to PECO.

Let me see what data is still available to be shared. I have not yet turned on the TV. The very fact we have power and a connection to the Internet is a blessing. Moja zona and our dog Java are safe and sound so far — Thanks be to God.

Rain Total: Yesterday’s rainfall total is yet unknown. Sunday’s total to this point: 0.28″

Wind: 5 mph. I can only assume by such low wind speeds that #Irene ‘s eye must be near my location.

Humidity: 100%

Temp: 71 degrees Fahrenheit.

Next update will occur after I collect some data. Possibly shortly. So far the effects of Irene seem to have been exaggerated, except for that period when we lost power for a few minutes. I am leaning to media and government over-hype — This is not as bad Floyd so far.

05:08 Sunday No new  Satellite image.  Too early for that rigamarole. Tornado watch just expired (uneventfully) for my area. Picked up another flood warning overnight so we still 7 flood warnings and 1 tropical storm warning in my area.

I was correct that the eye of #Irene is about Atlantic City, NJ (which east  and  a bit south of Phill). So that explains the relative slow winds speeds I am seeing/hearing. It appears that Irene’s greatest affect have been at the shore and the further inland you were the better off you were wind-wise — flooding has been worse inland. Storm surge at the shore is bad  and especially so during the high tides. Irene being so slow, that two high tides can occur. during the event horizon. So Shore flooding and beach erosion have been problems  –hence the necessity of evacuation orders.

Still it seems more people have died from falling trees or tree branches — why are you outside?  One of those fatalities was actually indoors.

Rain Total: Yesterday’s rainfall total is yet unknown. Sunday’s total to this point: 0.46″. An impressive 0.18″ increase in less than 1 hour. They are calling for 1-4″ (two sources: one says 1-2″ more and the other says 2-4″ more). Best I can determine is that 1.88″ fell yesterday in my area. Do not know the accuracy of that as I suspect it was higher as we were getting about 0.40″ inches an hour when I stopped recording yesterday night and it was accelerating still.

Wind: Variable 5-13 mph. Eye near my location. Gusts into the 20′s though I have heard them my data collector has not measured them (due to it not being continuous I am sure).

Humidity: 100%

Temp: 70 degrees Fahrenheit. It appears we have been in the 70-71 degree range for hours now — fairly cool for this time of year. It is  a 15-19 degree drop since the weather pattern entered the area.

0858 Sunday Satellite

08:58 Sunday Satellite image shows that #Irene has left town;  Uneventfully for my area. We still have 7 flood warnings in my area. The flooding will continue throughout Sunday as water flows down from the North down the rivers and bays back into the ocean.

The local TV and emergency responders say that this was not as bad as Floyd [so even others are comparing Irene to Floyd].

A final note: We lost power a 3rd time since my last post but only for a few minutes.

Rain Total: Yesterday’s rainfall total was 2.98-6.33″ depending on source. Sunday’s total to this point: 0.98″. Most sources say 2-4″ are likely for Sunday. We are way past the rainfall record books for August in history of Philadelphia area and we still have three days to go after today.

Wind: Variable 6-10 mph. Gusts into the 30′s though. It looks like a trailing band [down in Baltimore] will still bring some more wind until Irene fully clears the greater Philadelphia area.

Humidity: 100%

Temp: 67 degrees Fahrenheit. That is fairly cool for this time of year. It is  over a 20 degree drop since the weather pattern entered the area.

Blessings and Thanks to God for my good fortune. Things could have been much worse and I had little time/resources to prepare/protect my family from this disaster (#Irene).