help.html

These are LINKS to our E-MAIL addresses. If you click them your e-mail program should start up and open a window that allows you to send us an e-mail (if your computer is setup to do that automatically.)

Search engines are the "card catalog" of the internet, constantly searching for information and cataloging what they find. There are many different search engines, many have specialties. The search engines listed are some of the more popular available today.

When you use a search engine, take a moment and find the "HELP" or "HOW TO" that is available for most. They will tell you how to effectively use their search engine. For instance, I use GOOGLE more than any other search engine. To make my experience at GOOGLE more helpful, I have done the following:

Google will allow you to "fine tune" your results. Let's say you want to research BATS. You can key in the following to help you get what you want:

This tells google to find "bats", must have word mammal, must not have word baseball, must not have word batman.

These downloads are programs that can allow you to view different kinds of "information" you may run into.

As you might expect, different programs save their information in different ways. You would not expect information about your checking account to be stored the same way your genealogy records are ... they are totally different things. This applies to many programs.

Your computer will try to associate a "type of information" to a program that can "manage" that information. If you see an ".htm" file and click on it, your computer should open your "internet browser" program. HTM and HTML files are understood by BROWSERS.

YOU SHOULD BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO CLICK ON ANY FILES LABELED IN RED UNLESS YOU CAN'T MANAGE WITHOUT THEM.

If you don't know how to DOWNLOAD or INSTALL a program, come back when you get help, or e-mail me brent@bmgen.com. Please put "GENEALOGY" in the subject of the e-mail.

These bookstores specialize in GENEALOGY MATERIALS. We are not associated with them in any way. We have ordered books from a few of them and have included links to their sites here, just as a courtesy.

If you have other sites that you would like to recommend, please let me know brent@bmgen.com. Please put "GENEALOGY" in the subject of the e-mail.

These folks have asked us to put a link to their website here. We have no involvement, other than the common interest in genealogy. If you want to add a family website to this list, or, if you visit one of these links and find ANYTHING OFFENSIVE TO A NORMALLY PRUDENT PERSON, please write me brent@bmgen.com. Please put "GENEALOGY" in the subject of the e-mail.

These folks have asked us to put a link to their website here. We have no influence over the content of their website, we just offered to help them promote their wares (mainly music). If you visit one of these links and find ANYTHING OFFENSIVE TO A NORMALLY PRUDENT PERSON, please write me brent@bmgen.com. Please put "FRIEND OF BMGEN" in the subject of the e-mail.

This is just a few of the most recent additions. Really, the DATABASE SEARCH stays here most of the time, but the other items are usually new.

These are REGISTER style reports generated by PERSONAL ANCESTRAL FILE. Some folks find these reports more familiar than web pages.

This is the BEGINNINGS of our effort to get ALL of our documentation on the internet. A lot has to be done, but these items are available now.

This is an alphabetical list of everyone in our database. This list is created automatically, every night, just before midnight. It is grouped into pages by the first letter of the SURNAME, ie. A's, B's, C's and so on.

Not a complete list, but ALL of these folks have helped us collect data about the families in our database over the years.

These are a few of the books we have managed to convert to "internet ready". Many thanks to the individuals that CREATED THE ORIGINAL WORKS and gave us permission to make them available here.

If you don't have the program for the PDF or DOC format, you can DOWNLOAD it from our site, just look for the BUSINESS SECTION at the top of the BMGEN.COM main page.

You may want to hold off on downloading the viewer if you think you might need assistance.

These links will take you to other, popular, genealogy sites. If you want to add a link website to this list, or, if you visit one of these links and find ANYTHING OFFENSIVE TO A NORMALLY PRUDENT PERSON, please write me brent@bmgen.com. Please put "GENEALOGY" in the subject of the e-mail.

First of all, you can't change (ie. harm, alter, delete, destroy) anything, so feel free to experiment.

Key the surname into the field labeled "Name:" and click on "SURNAME". If you are unsure of the spelling, you can use the "%" symbol for a "wildcard", for example:

brent % brian

using the "wildcard" symbol eliminates the need for the middle name.

A B C D .... Z

Select a letter from the DROP DOWN LIST and you will get all the SURNAMES that start with that letter.

[T] indicates there are ANCESTORS in the database for this INDIVIDUAL. If you click on the [T] it will take you to a tree view of that INDIVIDUAL'S ANCESTORS.

BRENT R BRIAN

Indicates that there is a GROUP SHEET for that INDIVIDUAL. You can walk from INDIVIDUAL to INDIVIDUAL by clicking on underlined names.

HAM OPERATORS

Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is a hobby enjoyed by several hundred thousand people in the United States and by over a million people worldwide. Amateur radio operators call themselves "radio hams" or simply "hams."

To become a radio ham, you must pass an examination. Wireless amateur communication is done on numerous bands (relatively narrow frequency segments) extending from 1.8 MHz (a wavelength of about 160 meters) upwards through several hundred gigahertz (wavelengths in the millimeter range). There are several license classes. The more privileges a class of license conveys, the more difficult is the examination that one must pass to obtain it.

Amateur radio operation is fun, and that is one of the main reasons hams do it. But ham radio can provide communication during states of emergency. Ham radio works when all other services fail. After Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida in 1992, the utility grid was destroyed over hundreds of square miles. All cellular towers and antennas were blown down. Only amateur radio, the Citizens Radio Service ("Citizens Band"), and a few isolated pay phones with underground lines provided communication between the outside world and the public in the affected area.

DOCUMENT SEARCH

You can enter a single item or many items in the TEXT BOX, but, the way the program works now, it is better to search for a single item. You can key in:

MOSES

and Click GO, the program will search the text documents on file and return the names of the documents that contain the word "MOSES". There are no "WILDCARD" characters at this time.

OPEN SOURCE

Now this subject will put me on a soap box, so, hang on.

OPEN SOURCE, sometimes called "FREE SOFTWARE" is all about having the freedom to use YOUR COMPUTER the way YOU WANT TO.

Commercial software companies, like Microsoft, have "end user license agreements" or "eula" that restricts:

how you install their software
what you can do with their software
what you can say about it in the press
how you can dispose of old computers that contain their software
how many computers can connect to your computer using their software

The list of restrictions goes on and on. If you think I am kidding, go to:

MICROSOFT EULA

The OPEN SOURCE folks DONATE their time to develop programs that you can use, sometimes for FREE and sometimes for a small fee. But, there are amost no restrictions on COPYING or USING the programs. You are even free to change and sell them again.

The FREE SOFTWARE GPL (General Public License) follows ... I think you will see what I mean about "FREEDOM."

START OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.

8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.

9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.

NO WARRANTY

11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

FORMAT	PROGRAM REQUIRED TO USE THE FORMAT
WEB	You can use your INTERNET BROWSER to read this, just click
PDF	You will need ADOBE ACROBAT VIEWER
DOC	You will need WORD '97 VIEWER