What effect has the internet had on genealogy? Name-matching, the ease and acceptance of similar names without documented proof of descent, has greatly increased with the advent of on-line databases and national indexes. (name-matchinging should not be confused with a Surname Study)* 

When I started genealogy 40 years ago, the internet had not yet overwhelmed the home or the library. There were no national indexes. name-matchinging was not yet easily possible. Genealogy meant, "an account of the descent of a person, family or group" from a progenitor, usually the immigrant ancestor. If you mentioned that your hobby was genealogy and then someone replied, "how far back have you gone?", you knew they didn't know what genealogy meant. Now when someone replies "What name are you searching?" you know they don't know what genealogy means. The pursuit of genealogy required and still requires: a specific name AND a specific place AND a specific time. All three, together, need to be determined to accomplish the goal of finding, identifying and understanding your extended family.

Specific name = first name, middle name, surname

Specific place = township, county, state/province, country

Specific time = day, month, year

For example I had a female relative who married a W W Short in 1874 in Mc Lean county, Illinois. And I found a W W Short living right next door to her family in Mc Lean county, IL. But further research showed he was born in Kentucky not Delaware, he was born in 1816 not 1854, he had a different wife. And he wasn't the father either. My W W Short's father was W H and had been born in Delaware. This neighbor was in the same place at the same time and even had the same name but was not the same person. This W W Short was NOT my W W Short or related either.

Now the advent of the internet makes it appear possible to ignore two-thirds of the equation. Now only a name is needed to check national indexes. Only a name. Just a name. Therefore, spelling has become more important. The computer is very unforgiving of any miss-type. But the computer is not a genealogist. Spelled the same? Must be the same person. Not spelled the same? Must not be the same person. Spelling does not determine relationship. Spelling is NOT proof. And how often is your name miss-spelled by outsiders? Mine is often miss-interpreted by people outside of Western Michigan as Mr. Mark Vander.

Census records were NOT indexed. It was necessary to hand search, page by page – by page, by page, by page forever. Therefore it made the task much easier if you knew the state, the county, and particularly, the township. Then you had fewer pages to search. But now instead of searching, you can just enter a name. Any name. And that is exactly what the national databases promise. They promise they can find your ancestor's name. They can find George Washington's name. Are you descended from George Washington? (Before you get excited, George didn't have any surviving children).

Although indexing sources AND making the indexes available on the internet makes genealogy easier to do, transcribing and searching indexes is NOT genealogy. Beatrice Bailey, who copied phone books and sold them as genealogy, was a crook who was prosecuted. I think Beatrice Bailey's influence is still being felt and enlarged. Ancestry.com should be called Index.com. And the One World Tree, available for an extra fee, will put all these names together for you. To me this sounds just like Beatrice Bailey's promise when she put the phone books together.

Although I value the ease of indexed sources being so readily available, they provide clues not answers. Name-based sites can be a handy source of fun and information  but many of these sites must make a profit. Indexing the census nationally isn't cheap. But they can make more money from the ignorant. It is your responsibility not to be ignorant. It is your responsibility to be a genealogist and not confine yourself to being a name-matcher because a name-provider makes it so easy.

Seek out a true genealogy society that believes in educating not catering to the ignorant. Take advantage of any classes offered. Find you local genealogy society or even the State genealogy society by contacting your local library. They should know. Genealogy is a learned skill not a birthright. The internet is a library and should be used just like a library.  Granted, an unsupervised, unregulated free-for-all, but still a library "a collection of material."

Name-matchering further excludes the geographic and historical concepts that impact genealogy directly. Genealogy is a re-creation of someone else's life. It is a biography about common man. Information about the people, their way of life, their education, their occupation, their religion, their hobbies fill out the names and tell a more complete story about a family and the times they lived in.

It is important, therefore, to consult or create complimentary resources to discover how the history, available transportation, weather, wars, recessions affected a family. Where did your family move and why.

For example, the opening of free land in Oklahoma adversely affected the value of nearby farms in Kansas. The opening of the Illinois State Agricultural College adversely affected my grandfather's commercial chicken-raising school.

Transportation: plank roads, canals, railroads, highways, expressways all affect people.

Weather: drought, plagues, infestation, volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes all affect people.

Wars: French-Indian, American Revolution, War of 1812, Mexican-American, Civil, WWI, WWII all affect people.

Economics: recessions, inflation, panics, bank failures, deregulation all affect people.

Geography is important too. Boundaries change. Michigan used to be part of French Canada, then part of British Canada, then the United States. Parts of Michigan Territory were "stolen" by the States of Ohio and Indiana.  Michigan "stole" part of Wisconsin Territory. Michigan and Ohio called out their militia to fight over the boundary line. It was called the Toledo War. Toledo used to be part of Michigan Territory. .

Indexes are just that. You start your search with the index but that doesn't negate the need to then read the source document that the index is based on. The index alone doesn't stand alone. And the ease of using an index doesn't eliminate the value of un-indexed sources.

The choice is yours. Do you want to be a novice genealogist or an experienced name-matcher? Do you want to make a worthwhile contribution or just copy nonsense? The choice is yours. 

* A surname study collects all information on all spelling variations for a particular surname and studies the origins of this surname AND acknowledges that an extra effort is still needed to rule-in or rule-out the same surnamed individuals into each of their respective families by some criteria other than a similar name.  

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