This month marks the 15th anniversary of my German Roots genealogy website, which was launched in October 1998. The original idea was to have some useful tips and online resources for Americans with German ancestors, including suggestions for researching back to a person's German immigrant, how to find the immigrant's German hometown, and what to do next. Many directories of online genealogy records got added along the way. Those are probably what the German Roots website is best known for.
Directories of Online Genealogy Records
In 2000 I added a new webpage of online US death indexes and it quickly became the most popular page on the German Roots website. Three years later that webpage became quite large so I divided it in half, and then decided to spin it off into its own website with a page for each state. That single webpage on the German Roots website became the Online Searchable Death Indexes and Records website, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary next month.
Similar directories of online genealogy indexes were added to the German Roots website, for both U.S. and German records. Here are some of the most popular:
Online Birth and Marriage Records and Indexes (USA)
Ship Passenger Lists and Records on the Internet
Online Searchable Naturalization Records and Indexes (USA)
Online German Genealogy Records and Databases
The military indexes page was spun off into its own website in 2004. See: Online Military Indexes and Records
Wee Monster Genealogy
As some of you may remember, the German Roots website originally had this URL: http://home.att.net/~wee-monster. AT&T Worldnet was my ISP at the time and Monster was the name of my dog, who was wee in stature. That changed in 2010 when Worldnet closed down their personal webpages. Now the German Roots website is at http://www.germanroots.com/. If you still have links that use any of the old "wee-monster" URLs, they will no longer work. But you can find a handy guide with updated URLs of the most popular "wee-monster" webpages here: Wee-Monster Genealogy Webpages
As the German Roots website celebrates its 15th anniversary I hope it has been a useful tool for some in finding their ancestors.
