SOFTWARE
Being the sort of wonk who spends months researching the right couch, I fell in perfectly well with that brand of fanatic known as the genealogist. My initial interest sprang from the revelation that I had two famous ancestors: William Bradford, second governor of the Plymouth colony, and Sarah Wildes, executed in Salem in 1692. This I learned from a typewritten family genealogy. Armed with some fancy new tools, I hoped to confirm a more dubious rumor: that we were kin to Harvey Lee Yeary, aka Lee Majors, aka the Six Million-Dollar Man.
I tried Genealogy.com first. It had well-organized message boards, a tree-building tutorial, and helpful articles and links. Here I found mentions of William, Sarah, and even Lee among the half-billion records the site claims. But, at most, searches revealed only dates of birth and death, along with last known residence. You can get only so far before you have to start paying for access to more-detailed online databases and CD-ROMs. Every time I wanted to go deeper, I had to pay more.
So I turned to Generations Grande Suite 8.0, 31 CDs of genealogical excess that include several databases as well as instructions on tree-building (in 3-D, no less). Though I found that Generations panders to celebrity (Titanic descendants, for example), it wasn't the right sort. In its World Name Index discs, I found bare-bones records for the governor and the family witch, but to find out more, I had to subscribe to online database Kindred Konnections, which is not associated with my software's manufacturer. (SierraHome plans to have its own Web database, with records from the entire US Census from 1790 to 1920, in December.)
Software packages and genealogy Web sites, I discovered, are a great place to get started, to find contact info for obscure county-records departments, to hook up with other ancestry buffs. But they're hardly complete phone books of the dead: You have to start with a lot of knowledge about your family connections before you boot up. Then, once you've located a relative or two, you'll have to employ old-fashioned networking and shoe-leather research to build the rest of your tree. I spent many, many hours sending out flares and chasing canards on the message boards, but came away with only a few hard-won triumphs.
And what about my alleged bond with Colonel Steve Austin? I cruised the Web at large, striking gold with a site called Cyborg: The British Lee Majors Online Fan Club. (Is this something like the French and Jerry Lewis?) According to the site, Harvey Lee Yeary was raised in Middlesboro, Kentucky, by his aunt Mildred Yeary, my great-grandmother's putative first cousin. Finally, some roots revealed.
Generations Grande Suite 8.0 : $89.95. SierraHome: (800) 757 7707, www.sierrahome.com. World Family Tree: $19.99 monthly, $199.95 yearly. Genealogy.com: www.genealogy.com.
STREET CRED
Trafficking Jam
Invisible Band
Jet Pack
Flash of Recognition
The Bargain Store
Caddie Whack
Six Million Degrees of Separation
ReadMe
Music
Ring My Bell
Scene Blocking 101
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Just Outta Beta
Underware
Derailing the Thought Train
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