Communties formerly on CompuServe

[Andrew B.]

These are web forums I know about that spun from CompuServe communities.

Studio Products (http://studioproducts.com/) (the forum here came from Artists forum on CIS)
AVSIG (http://www.aero-farm.com/avsig.htm)
Desktop Publishing Forum (http://www.desktoppublishingforum.com/)
The Pets Forums (http://www.thepetsforums.com/)

And, of course, The Tapcis Forum (http://tapcis.com/).

Anyone know of others?

...Andrew

[davidh]

http://www.mythical.net/ Thom Hartmann, ADD, etc.

http://www.catholic.org go.compuserve.com/catholiconline

http://www.gographics.com/ (forums are still on Compuserve)

http://www.commtalk.de/ formerly German OS/2, etc.

http://www.flefo.org/modules.php?name=Forums foreign language forum

http://www.nomissoft.com/ Simpilot, Virtual Access

[davidh]

Go to http://groups.yahoo.com and search for "compuserve" and you will find others.

David H.

[estherschindler]

http://www.wineloverspage.com/

Which is Robin Garr, from the Wine and Beer forum.

[Lindsey]

http://www.wineloverspage.com/

Which is Robin Garr, from the Wine and Beer forum.

FWIW, Robin Garr is now the contract holder for CompuServe's Genealogy Forum. Community. Whatever.

--Lindsey

[MollyM/CA]

Is the chess forum still going? It was given living space by SimPilot, wasn't it?

FWIW, Avsig's Rob Dubner tweaked TapCis for use on the forum, which uses UBB software. TapUBB looks and acts just like TapCis, pretty much, and has a cute little perk: you can access link sites given in messages from it.

CS's GARDEN seems to be acquiring a few refugees from forums which have closed--

[davidh]

Is the chess forum still going? It was given living space by SimPilot, wasn't it? There's a forum section for chess at nomissoft but it appears to be inactive.

David H.

[ktinkel]

FWIW, Robin Garr is now the contract holder for CompuServe's Genealogy Forum. Community. Whatever.It appears he has also moved his wine forum back to CIS (or duplicated it, anyway). It is now called Wine Lovers Community (http://community.compuserve.com/winelovers).

[Lindsey]

It appears he has also moved his wine forum back to CIS (or duplicated it, anyway). It is now called Wine Lovers Community (http://community.compuserve.com/winelovers).
Yes, I do believe he mentioned that he had taken over CompuServe's wine forum again. And apparently, there are a couple of my distant Loofborrow cousins among his regulars. ;-)

--Lindsey

[ktinkel]

nd apparently, there are a couple of my distant Loofborrow cousins among his regulars. ;-)Ooops — you’ve lost me. Are they famous? <g>

[Lindsey]

Ooops — you’ve lost me. Are they famous? <g>
No, not famous, just recognizable by the name -- by whatever spelling it takes (and there are many). But so far as I am aware, all of the people of that surname in the US are descended from the same guy, a Quaker miller (http://blake.prohosting.com/~rwl100/john_loofbourrow.htm) who arrived in New Jersey in 1685. I got a big chuckle when Robin said, in response to a message I posted on the genealogy forum about the wide variation in the spelling of the name, "Hey, I've got both a Loughborough and a Loofbourrow in my wine community, but it never occured to me until now that those were variations of the same name." You never know where one of those descendants is going to turn up.

I guess about the closest claim to fame is that there is a Loughborough Avenue in St. Louis, named for an early surveyor of that area, John M. Loughborough.

--Lindsey

[ktinkel]

No, not famous, just recognizable by the name -- by whatever spelling it takes …Thanks. Until this thread I had never run into anyone by that name, however spelled.

All descendents of one guy, huh? Like the two women half the Askenazy Jews are descended from. Or the gazillions of Americans descended from someone who came over on the Mayflower. The multiplication factors in genealogy are amazing.

[Lindsey]

The multiplication factors in genealogy are amazing.
Indeed. In fact, there was an article somewhere within the last 5 years or so -- I think it was either in Harper's or The Atlantic, but I can't swear to that -- making the case that the way the mathematics work out, anyone who lived on earth at least some minimum number of years ago (and I'm afraid I've forgotten exactly what the time span was, but it was within the range of recorded history) is the ancestor of every living person on earth if they are the ancestor of anyone at all (that is, if they had offspring and all of the lines of descent from those offspring have not died out). And the same thing applies to more limited ranges of people who lived more recently: Anyone of European descent, they said, is a descendant of Charlemagne. (The trick, of course, is in being able to trace the particular line of descent.) And not just of Charlemagne, but of every other European who lived 1000 years ago and has living descendants.

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

Thanks. Until this thread I had never run into anyone by that name, however spelled.
I hadn't either, until I came across it in the genealogical information my aunt had given my father; the name was out of my great-grandmother's family Bible. Her grandmother had been a Loofborrow. I was intrigued by the strange name, and also by the fact that it was a maternal line that had been documented when male lines had not been, and wanted to find out where it came from. I had initially guessed it was Dutch (I knew the family was from New York), but it turned out that it was English.

Odd names like that are a genealogical gift. They are like the edge pieces in a jigsaw puzzle -- there are a limited number of them, and a limited number of ways they can fit together. They help you to construct a frame into which the other pieces can be fitted.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Odd names like that are a genealogical gift.And they beat the heck out of the Johnsons and Joneses and Bakers in my family tree!!!

[ktinkel]

Odd names like that are a genealogical gift. They are like the edge pieces in a jigsaw puzzle -- there are a limited number of them, and a limited number of ways they can fit together. They help you to construct a frame into which the other pieces can be fitted.You bet!

My lineage on my mother’s side is full of Lees, one of the most prolific crowd in New England. Very hard to disentangle them, too. (I didn’t do it but one of my sisters did, and I was a sympathetic onlooker.)

[Lindsey]

And they beat the heck out of the Johnsons and Joneses and Bakers in my family tree!!!
Believe me, Deans, Fords, and Hunts are no better!

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

My lineage on my mother’s side is full of Lees, one of the most prolific crowd in New England. Very hard to disentangle them, too. (I didn’t do it but one of my sisters did, and I was a sympathetic onlooker.)
Oh -- yeah, Lees in this part of the country are a bit hard to disentangle, too! Especially when they tended to use the same names over and over and over from one generation to the next...

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

I'm sure that's true. And my cousin would say the same thing of her father's side -- Williams!

[Lindsey]

I'm sure that's true. And my cousin would say the same thing of her father's side -- Williams!
There's one Williams family in Hanover that's easy to recognize because their first two initials are always double letters. One day when an unusually large number of them had been through one of our branch offices, one of the tellers was heard to say, "I've seen every Williams today from AA to ZZ!"

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

"I've seen every Williams today from AA to ZZ!"ROFL!! And my cousin's father (living in Richmond) is TT! (Thomas T., called Sonny)

[ktinkel]

Oh -- yeah, Lees in this part of the country are a bit hard to disentangle, too! Especially when they tended to use the same names over and over and over from one generation to the next...I bet there are Lees all over your neck of the woods. Wonder what connection, if any, they have with the northern Lees.

As for repeating the same given names, that used to be standard in many parts of Europe, including England and Ireland. I was named for my father’s sister Kathleen and my mother’s sister Kathleen, and my middle name is from my father’s sister Virginia and my mother, who was named Virginia. (I think they figured I would be the only girl so they gave me the whole pile of names! Then they went on to have three more girls!)

I have cousins and aunts on both sides with those same names. After a while, you run out of nicknames, but those would not always turn up on genealogy charts anyway.

[Judy G. Russell]

Sometimes the naming conventions really help though. When I was trying to trace the parents of one of my GG grandmothers, making some assumptions based on the names of her children (first son William named after the father's father, could the second son Elijah be named after the mother's father) and then testing those assumptions proved verrrrry helpful.

[ktinkel]

Sometimes the naming conventions really help …Sure. It is definitely useful to know in general that while the Irish (and others) always name their kids for living family members but that Jews (among others) never do so (although they may use the initial letter of the name).

But when rummaging among historical records, regardless, sure is easy to get confused.

Keeps you on your toes.

[Lindsey]

ROFL!! And my cousin's father (living in Richmond) is TT! (Thomas T., called Sonny)
Oh, my word! Is your cousin's father from Hanover County? My former boss was part of that family. It would be funny if your cousin's father was, too!

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

I bet there are Lees all over your neck of the woods.
Yeah, there were a bunch of those guys even at the time of the Revolution. (That "Here a Lee, there a Lee, everywhere a Lee, a Lee" song from "1776" was spot on.)

Wonder what connection, if any, they have with the northern Lees.
Aaaaack! Hard enough to sort out the Virginia guys!

As for repeating the same given names, that used to be standard in many parts of Europe, including England and Ireland.
Yes, and for the most part, I think It's a nice tradition, a way of linking one generation to another. But it's having multiple families in the same generation living in the same jurisdiction and all using the same set of names that drives genealogists right up the wall.

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

Sometimes the naming conventions really help though. When I was trying to trace the parents of one of my GG grandmothers, making some assumptions based on the names of her children (first son William named after the father's father, could the second son Elijah be named after the mother's father) and then testing those assumptions proved verrrrry helpful.
Oh, sure. But in my case, I was trying to find some information on a Mary I-forget-her-two-middle-initials Lee of Culpeper County who married a James F. Dean, who I'm thinking could have been a relative of my great-great-grandfather. This has been a while back, and I don't have my notes in front of me, so I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but as I recall, the tax records showed only one Lee in Culpeper around that time, a Hancock Lee. The records for the settlement of his estate after his death showed that he had a wife named Susan. And sure enough, a Susan Lee showed up in the Culpeper tax lists immediately following his death, with roughly the same amount of taxable property, and some years further on, a Ludwell Lee showed up taxed for what appeared to be the same property.

So, I figure: this looks like a Hancock Lee married to a woman named Susan, has a daughter Mary (whose approximate birth date I knew) and son Ludwell. Shouldn't be too hard to locate these guys in a Lee genealogy if they're part of that family right?

WRONG!

There is a Hancock Lee in just about every family in every generation of Lees from the 17th century on. And the name "Ludwell" is just about as common. I even did find a Hancock who died in the same year as the guy in Culpeper, was married to a Susan, had a daughter Mary who was the same age as the one I was looking into, and a son Ludwell. But he lived in a different county. And that Mary died, unmarried, in 1860. I can verify from the census that she was single and living in -- whatever county it was -- at the same time that "my" Mary was married to James and living in Albemarle. And that Mary was still living in 1880, in Appomattox.

Doesn't help, either, that many of those Lees owned property all over the state.

Pfffffft!

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Actually Sonny is from West By God Virginia. Somewhere around Bluefield, I think.

[Judy G. Russell]

when rummaging among historical records, regardless, sure is easy to get confused.Ain't that the truth...

[Judy G. Russell]

ROFL! Yeah, that's a bit worse than my Martin-Thomas-William's!

[Judy G. Russell]

it's having multiple families in the same generation living in the same jurisdiction and all using the same set of names that drives genealogists right up the wall.You mean like my Martin Alexander Baker who had a brother named David Davenport Baker and named his own son David Davenport Baker while his brother, of course, named HIS son Martin Alexander Baker and they all had daughters named Louisa?

[Lindsey]

Actually Sonny is from West By God Virginia. Somewhere around Bluefield, I think.
Bluefield, VA -- the air-conditioned city of the South! Gorgeous country out that way.

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

You mean like my Martin Alexander Baker who had a brother named David Davenport Baker and named his own son David Davenport Baker while his brother, of course, named HIS son Martin Alexander Baker and they all had daughters named Louisa?
Yeah, like that exactly. You think they conspired to do that? Hey, guys, here's what will drive our descendants crazy...

And of course, they made sure only to live in places where the courthouses were destined to burn down.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Bluefield WEST Va, actually.

[Judy G. Russell]

Or in counties where the courthouses didn't get burned, but they sent all their records to Richmond where they DID get burned. Sigh...

[Lindsey]

Bluefield WEST Va, actually.
Is Bluefield another one of those split cities like Bristol?

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Looking at a map, it sure looks like it -- either that or there are two identically named cities separated only by a state line!

[Lindsey]

Looking at a map, it sure looks like it -- either that or there are two identically named cities separated only by a state line!
My high school choral teacher was from Bluefield -- Virginia. She took the choir on a road trip my junior year to sing for her old high school. It was great fun -- even if the bus drivers were arrested on the way back home.

--Lindsey

[fhaber]

Some exit line! Do tell.

[Judy G. Russell]

I'm with Frank -- let's hear the rest of that story!

[Lindsey]

I'm with Frank -- let's hear the rest of that story!
I thought that might get your attention. :p This is directly tied to that community sitting right on the Virginia-West Virginia border.

We had two chartered buses; it took that many to hold the chorus, a small band, and the chaperones. The route back home that the drivers had planned required a brief loop through the state of West Virginia. As it happened, the West Virginia county that the route went through had instituted an obscure licensing requirement for commercial vehicles (trucks and buses) that they only enforced one day out of the year. And it just happened to be our "lucky" day.

The buses were in the process of climbing up into the West Virginia mountains when they were pulled over by the county police asking to see the sticker that was evidence they had paid this obscure county licensing fee. They didn't have it, of course -- nobody knew anything about this licensing requirement -- and the police said they couldn't issue a ticket, that the drivers would have to come to the courthouse right then and pay the fine, or sit in jail overnight. They wanted the drivers to make a U-turn with those buses on a narrow two-lane mountain road to take them to a designated parking area. The lead driver flatly refused to risk that, and the police finally consented to let them take the buses down to the bottom of the mountain before turning around. They followed us all the way back down, and then all the way back up again.

We got to the parking lot, which was a veritable sea of trucks and buses that had all been pulled for this same offense. The police took the two drivers off to the courthouse, and seemed not at all concerned that they had just stranded nearly 100 high school kids hundreds of miles away from home. Fortunately, the parking lot was adjacent to a Holiday Inn, so the chaperones took us in to get some lunch, and the choral director went to the courthouse with the drivers.

The fine for not having this stupid sticker was fairly steep -- several hundred dollars per vehicle, as I recall, which was a fairly substantial amount in 1971. The drivers didn't carry that kind of cash on them; it was left to the choral director to write a check on her personal account. Had she not been able to do that, they'd have put the drivers in jail, and I'm not sure what would have happened to us.

It was after 2 a.m. before we finally got back home -- many hours after we had been scheduled to arrive. And we were told in no uncertain terms that no one would be excused for being absent or late the next day -- they didn't want to give the school an excuse for forbidding future trips. (Unfortunately, though, I think that was the last out-of-town trip that the chorus ever made. Sports teams can go all over the state, but anybody else can just forget that.)

Needless to say, there were lots of very angry parents over the whole affair, and the West Virginia State Chamber of Commerce -- and probably some members of Congress as well -- was innundated with letters of protest. I do hope that locality has managed to come up with some other way of funding its annual budget besides legalized extortion.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

"Legalized extortion" is exactly right -- and lots of little towns and big cities all over the country have done it in various ways. My father told the story of getting a traffic ticket in Chicago when he was a very young driver for some ridiculous offense (like going 0.25 miles per hour LESS than the posted speed or some such) and having the ticket returnable in person only on a national holiday (IOW when the courts would ordinarily be closed). He went down, with what he thought was at least a thousand other folks, and paid a fine... in cash only... no receipt given...

I will say that if I'd been your chorus director I'd have stopped payment on the check...

[Lindsey]

I will say that if I'd been your chorus director I'd have stopped payment on the check...
LOL!! Well, I'm sure the bus company reimbursed her, and I imagine they had plenty to say with the officials in West Virginia.

Your father's experience sounds like the very same sort of thing. And they get away with it because it's not worth the time and expense of trying to fight that sort of thing when you live a long distance away. I'd like to think those sorts of things are less common now than they used to be. :(

--Lindsey

[Jeff]

LOL!! Well, I'm sure the bus company reimbursed her, and I imagine they had plenty to say with the officials in West Virginia.

Your father's experience sounds like the very same sort of thing. And they get away with it because it's not worth the time and expense of trying to fight that sort of thing when you live a long distance away. I'd like to think those sorts of things are less common now than they used to be. :(

--Lindsey

Some time I should tell the assembled how I escaped East Berlin with an unpaid autobahn traffic ticket, and then what I went through to pay it from Holland fearful of the border check on my next trip from west to east. They did have dungeons in those days...

- Jeff

[Lindsey]

Some time I should tell the assembled how I escaped East Berlin with an unpaid autobahn traffic ticket, and then what I went through to pay it from Holland fearful of the border check on my next trip from west to east. They did have dungeons in those days...
Oh, my!! But give it time; before long, you'll have to worry about that sort of thing here, too, every time you check in at an airline counter. :(

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

I'd like to think those sorts of things are less common now than they used to be. :( Don't bank on it.

[Mike]

Look up Union City, Ohio, and Union City, Indiana.

The schools on either side of the state line are administered by the respective state, but otherwise, the two cities, economically, are one.

Even more fun is that Indiana does not observe Daylight Savings Time. That could cause problems for making appointments, except that everyone knows the convention is to use Ohio time--always.

[Lindsey]

everyone knows the convention is to use Ohio time--always.
LOL!! I like that. Just ignore those idiots in the state legislature who refuse to get with the program. <g>

--Lindsey

[BrucePatterson]

These are web forums I know about that spun from CompuServe communities.

Anyone know of others?

...Andrew

Andrew,

Yes!

Visit my new forum at RepublicanForum.com (http://www.republicanforum.com/). It's been open for about a month now. It has full threading and full OLR support. Remember those?

Canceled my CIS account today. It's a new world out there!

Bruce

[BrucePatterson]

Cars and Trucks (http://www.ericpetersautos.com/)
Recreational Vehicles (http://www.rvforum.net/)
Trainnet (http://www.trainnet.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi)

[Andrew B.]

Visit my new forum at RepublicanForum.com (http://www.republicanforum.com/). It's been open for about a month now. It has full threading and full OLR support. Remember those?Hi Bruce. I've not been here for awhile, and I missed your message before. Thanks for posting the links.

Can you tell us about the OLR? Is it provided by Web Crossing?

[BrucePatterson]

Hi Andrew,

The OLR is any newsreader such as Outlook Express or Virtual Access. I'm using Outlook Express, but I understand that Firefox has a newsreader too.

I use OE instead of VA because OE allows me to reply to messages in HTML format complete with pictures and I can use any font, color and text size I want.

Bruce

[Andrew B.]

Ah. I thought maybe it was something other than the NNTP connection. Thanks for clarifying this.

[BrucePatterson]

Is that bad?

[Andrew B.]

No, it's not bad.

[BrucePatterson]

Good!

[Andrew B.]

I got a question answered at cars and trucks. It was how to get an extra remote for my car alarm.