GenWeb rich site on Maine

Those of us who hang out in libraries know the fun of “serendipity,” stumbling across just the right book you’d never noticed before.

Now we find the same thing on the Internet. Instead of trying to zero in on a particular ancestor, maybe we’re just wandering around a Web site to see what clicks.

No doubt you’ve heard of Cyndi’s List, located at www.cyndislist.com. This is a mammoth site, but not difficult to negotiate.

When our interest is specifically Maine, we can find a lot by wandering on Maine GenWeb at www.rootsweb.com/~megenweb.

This is the Maine Genealogy and History Project, a part of the USGenWeb Project. Maine GenWeb is coordinated by David Colby Young, with the assistance of Tina Vickery.

Maine GenWeb has been on the Internet for five years. Like projects in other states – Kentucky was the first, by the way – it depends on volunteers to provide records and links that help us trod the path to our forebears.

I like having paper copies to help me remember what a site has to offer, so I was pleased to find I could copy an overview of this site in five pages or so.

It includes state resources – census, cemetery, library links and queries; county information; local links; organization links such as the Maine Genealogical Society and the Maine Old Cemetery Association; links to vital records and other types of resources; and an informative statement about USGenWeb by the National Genealogical Society.

This site also gets high marks for information leading us to resources that aren’t on the Web. That shouldn’t surprise us, because David Young has been known in genealogical circles as an author, editor and indexer of research materials for many years.

I particularly like the “Maine Research Helps” section, which has so many fascinating listings I haven’t been able to try them all.

One that I checked was the “Special Maine 1837 Census,” which grows as volunteers add more towns. Willimantic in Piscataquis County listed heads of household for four families totaling 23 people: Peter Brown, John Glover, John Greeley and James Johnston.

You can find everything from Maine genealogists for hire to the Fat Men Society of Androscoggin County in 1870. No kidding.

Have you been wondering about the Maine State Archives, which closed its search room last winter after a water leak? You’ll be pleased to know the search room reopened a week ago, and is back to its regular hours – 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday to Friday. As Lewis Carroll would say, “Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

There’s more good news, too, at the Brownville-Brownville Junction Historical Society, at 72 Church St. in Brownville. Curator Jim Bryant reports in the latest newsletter that Clarence Ellis has donated a collection of more than 200 items of railroad memorabilia.

The organization is looking for letters, receipts, diaries, clothing, genealogy, household items for the “country kitchen corner,” and anything else you might think of. The museum is open 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday and Saturday through September.

If you can’t drop by, join up at a cost of $5 a year, or $100 for a lifetime: Brownville Historical Society, 72 Church St., P.O. Box 750, Brownville, ME 04414.

The descendants of Israel and Susannah (Hood) Kinney will hold a reunion 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday at the YMCA on Park Street in Dover-Foxcroft. Bring a dish to share .For information, contact Duane E. Crabtree at (781) 646-5288 or e-mail dcrabtree@rcn.com.

3128. STEWART-STEWARD. Looking for information on Loren E. Stewart or Steward of Montville, born about 1840. He served in the 26th Maine during the Civil War. Children: Eddie or Edwin L., Frank L., Hattie and Mabel, born in the 1860s. Grandson Loren Prescott Stewart, born 1890s, taught ROTC briefly at University of Maine, his alma mater. Great-grandson Loren Francis Stewart, born 1920, Augusta, also a UMaine grad. Mary Frances Stewart, 749 Quinta Luz, El Paso, TX 79922; or e-mail stewart maryfrances@hotmail.com.

3129. NASH-GANSIL. Am doing a Nash family tree and trying to identify person in a photograph, possibly my grandmother. It would help if I knew when the photographer was in business – George Gansil, No. 1 Main Street, Bangor. Marion (Nash) Boyle, 720 Cabot St., Beverly, MA 01915.

Send queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402; or e-mail queries to familyti@bangordailynews.net.