"And the real history is a little grungy -- USGenWeb started out with a small group of people who jumpstarted the project by ripping off existing genealogical projects on the Web. Jeff Murphy ripped off the GenWeb name that Gary Hoffman & Co. had spent a couple of years publicizing. A number of early state coordinators (including John Rigdon) lifted Web pages that Cyndi Howells and Karen Isaacson had spent weeks researching." ---Brian Leverich, USGENWEB-ALL, 9 Dec 1996

CHAPTER I. PREHISTORY.

In April of 1994, Gary Hoffman and a group of like minded individuals started discussing "GenWeb," their idea for "a coordinated, interlinked, distributed worldwide genealogy database." This large database might be "put together very simply using hypertext documents residing on servers connected by the Internet." Many people participated in the discussions of the GenWeb up until at least August of 1997, when the mailing list for the project was shut down. Interestingly enough, one of the reasons given for the closure of the GenWeb mailing list to all but a few "hardcore programmers" was the appropriation by The USGenWeb Project of the name "GenWeb". In his last message to the mailing list, Gary Hoffman writes,

"Finally, the outright theft of the name "genweb" by the US (and now World) GENWEB movement has lead to so much confusion and mis-directed message traffic that I have frankly become weary of the effort to keep it straight. By forming the GenWeb Foundation and asserting a trademark in the term "genweb" I thought I was reserving the term for use in describing the concept of linked pedigrees on the Web. The result, however, is that supporters of the GenWeb proposal have declined to use the term (see GenDex and GenMatch) and promoters of an entirely different concept (USGENWEB) have co-opted the term for their own use. I am not relinquishing rights to the term, just shutting down the mailing list." [Gary Hoffman, 4 Aug 1997]

Among the people participating in the GenWeb mailing list discussions was Jeff Murphy, a genealogist who focused his research interests on Muhlenberg county, Kentucky. He began participating in the discussion of GenWeb in November of 1995. [John Rigdon, who later became the second National Coordinator of the USGenWeb Project also began participating in the GenWeb mailing list about this time.] On 1 April 1996, the following message was posted to the ROOTS-L mailing list:

=====

Date:         Mon, 1 Apr 1996 15:20:30 -0800
Reply-To:      Jeff Murphy 
Sender:       ROOTS-L Genealogy List 
From:          Jeff Murphy 
Subject:      Comprehensive Kentucky Database Project

A group of us have begun work on the development on a comprehensive 
Kentucky genealogy database.

The structure revolves around linking together databases which have people
who were born, married, or died in KY.  To facilitate the placement of these
databases, which will be included in the GenWeb data, we have started by
creating a master page for all counties in Kentucky (see below).  As a new
county web page is added, it will be included in the master page.  This will
give all KY researchers a single entry point to all counties in the state.

If you would like to have your data available on the web, and have names in
KY, please look at the master page to see if a county has been created yet
for your data.  Contact the page owner and talk to them about linking to
your data, and about locating space on the web where your data can be placed.

If you do not see the county you are interested available yet, and might be
interested in putting up such a web page yourself, there is help available
to do just that.  Feel free to join in the discussion about all this by
sending a message to majordomo@teleport.com with the single line subscribe
kygenweb-l - which is *not*, btw, a place to put queries.  A sample web page
has been created to help get you started, which you can get by writing me
and asking for it.

In the past week, 8 new web pages have been created and placed on the web.
Plenty of counties left, though.  Enthusiasm is running high.  And newcomers
are always welcome.

We are also looking for some software support, to help us implement a
special LINK feature, which will help tie together individuals in different
databases and provide an html pointer to the other database.  None of the
existing html generators give us the features we need without having to
jury-rig our data, and it may require the development of a new html
generator, if anyone is up to it.  Additionally, we need to be able to
reverse-sort location fields to develop a master index by county.

We feel that this is an opportunity to create a working model for the rest
of the country, and that other states may follow suit.  But we need some
practical application of what has been discussed theoretically in GENWEB for
so long - a way to link a single individual from one database to another,
without including a URL in the notes.  We have a method for doing this, but
need the programmers to help us.

Jeff Murphy                      Redmond, Oregon
KY genealogy: http://www.teleport.com/~jmurphy/
subscribe to PAFHELP-L or KYGENWEB-L at majordomo@teleport.com

This message was apparently the first public germ of the idea that shortly was to evolve into the KYGenWeb project and later into the USGenWeb Project.

On to Chapter II!
Back to the TOC

© 1999 by Teresa Lindquist, all rights reserved. The opinions expressed above are solely those of the author; they may not reflect those of the USGenWeb Project or its members. The USGenWeb Project Advisory Board does not endorse this site and is not affiliated with it. All information from Jeff Murphy is published with his permission. Several people have helped me research this material, I'd like to thank them by name, but as they are still project members to do so would invite reprisals against them. SoYou Know Who You Are, and you have my thanks!