TSGS Web Site

It has been some time since I mentioned our TSGS web site here on the blog.  On 14 Dec 2008, we began using a new counter with a cool world map that maintained some interesting facts about where many of our visitors to the site were checking us out.  The counter is named ClustrMaps.  Since we began its use, we have gotten 13,926 hits from all over the world.  In addition to the United States, we have been visited by at least one person from 46 countries with Germany leading the way, 42 hits; next is Canada with 31 visits; 25 from Taiwan; United Kingdom (GB) had 19; and Ireland finished the top 5 with 10 hits!

Over the last three years, we have had a total of 9,953 hits around the world, of these the United States had 9,731 with Indiana getting a huge bulk of these visits (4,192).  The other two states in the Tri-State area were Illinois with 598 hits and Kentucky had 572.  These were the top 3 and the following are the remainder of the top 10: California 492, Texas 312, Michigan 310, Florida 256, Ohio 248, Missouri 209, and Tennessee with 171.

When you go to our web site - http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~intsgs/index.html 
scroll to the bottom center and click on the map to see graphically on a world map where our visits are located and a list of states and countries with their totals.

The wide spread of these hits explains why we have so many TSGS members scattered all over the U.S.A.

- Compiled by JGWest

The TSGS Web Site ClustrMaps Counter

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Our society's web site has a neat counter on the main page that shows with red dots on the world map where all of our web site visitors are located. Since 14 Dec 2009, we have had 6,837 visits! People from all 50 states have visited our site with 43 countries besides the USA taking a look at TSGS! Germany (DE) 34 visitors, broken down as ~ Nordrhein-Westfalen 18, Baden-Wurttemberg 6, Rheinland-Pfalz 4, Sachsen 2, Niedersachsen 1, Sachsen-Anhalt 1, Hessen 1, N/A 1.

Here is the most recent visitors:

Tuesday, January 24 @ 8:54 : New York, New York, US
Tuesday, January 24 @ 8:51 : Evansville, Indiana, US
Tuesday, January 24 @ 8:39 : Evansville, Indiana, US
Tuesday, January 24 @ 6:51 : Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US
Tuesday, January 24 @ 6:14 : Newburgh, Indiana, US
Tuesday, January 24 @ 5:25 : Terre Haute, Indiana, US
Tuesday, January 24 @ 5:21 : Virginia Beach, Virginia, US
Tuesday, January 24 @ 4:37 : Gilbert, Arizona, US
Tuesday, January 24 @ 3:49 : Evansville, Indiana, US
Tuesday, January 24 @ 1:38 : Grand Chain, Illinois, US

THE CAPTAIN'S LOG –TSGS News

Reminder that we have a TSGS Meeting Tuesday night (June 9) at Willard Library. there will not be a 6:30PM Help Session for this meeting. We will conduct the installation of the newly elected officers and we will vote on the 2009-2010 TSGS Budget. Keep in mind that we will not have Monthly meetings in July & August.

Our cool ClustrMaps Counter shows that our Regular TSGS Web Site has been visited by people from 31 countries with the USA now registering just over 2000 unique visits with Canada (10), United Kingdom (11) and Ireland (26) showing 10 or more unique visits. We have 13 countries with 2 or more visits. In the USA, our site has been visited by someone in each state except Maine & West Virginia. I am surprised that no one from West Virginia has not visited us since Dec. 14, 2008 when I started the ClustrMaps Counter.

John G. West, TSGS President

THE CAPTAIN'S LOG –TSGS News

TSGS meeting tonight at Willard Library. The 6:30 HELP Session "Research At the Family History Library" will be led by Janet Goebel with the 7:30 p.m. regular meeting "Smithland - Genealogy of a Kentucky River Town" will be presented by Brenda Joyce Jerome, CG as our program speaker. We will conduct the election of officers for 2009-2010.

Our ClustrMaps Counter on our regular TSGS web site shows that we have been visited by 30 different countries... we are attracting attention around the world! We have had over 58,000 hits to our web site since near the beginning of our site being on the Internet in 1996.

John G. West, TSGS President

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

Alice Warner sent this to the KYGENWEB email list: Recent WKU Folk Studies graduate Mary Koegel as developed this really cool educational website on Kentucky history. It is a virtual timeline... you click on the colored dots to see what they have concerning that highlited time. Once you get to that page some of the captions are blue and hyperlinked so you can go to the next sub-topic. Check it out! http://kdl.kyvl.org/kyleidoscope.htm

From Virginia Aldridge ~ Just a note to let everyone know all 291 images from Volume 25 are now online. I am continuing to work on attaching the names to the images.
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thetiethatbindsour/van_mar/vol_25_index.htm

Don Counts sent this link to me from The Evansville Courier & Press concerning events for May and National Preservation Month: http://www.courierpress.com/news/2009/apr/26/may-is-national-preservation-month-here-is-a-of/


We now have over 100 unique visits to our regular TSGS Web Site from countries outside of the United States! Here is a ClustrMaps view of the European hits.




The small red dots represent 1-2 hits and the next size are for 3-99 hits. Ireland has 21 hits with United Kingdom having 10 unique visits.

- Compiled by JGWest

THE CAPTAIN'S LOG –TSGS News

Tonight is the TSGS Annual Dinner Meeting at the Sirloin Stockade on Bellemeade Ave. near Green River Road. From 5:30 t0 6:30 we will eat and enjoy some fellowship (genealogists usually have little trouble visiting with one another!). We will have a very short meeting with some Certificates of Appreciation presented to some TSGS members for contributing to the success of our society. About 7PM our guest speaker, Judge Redwine, will speak concerning Judge Lynch. I am really looking forward to hearing his program. Come join us. You do not need to be a member to attend our meetings.

Our regular web site has recently jumped to over 1,500 visits since last Thanksgiving (less than five months) which gives us about 300 visits per month or an average of 10 visits a day. Before this time we got about 10 visits every two or three weeks! Our Clustra-Maps Counter shows that we have had visits from people in 29 countries with 12 having two or more visits. These are unique visits meaning that each person is only counted once in a 24 hour period. The number of hits during this time is over 5,350! Which is over 1,000 hits per month. We are attracting some visitors to our web sites. Since 14 Dec 2008, the TSGS Cruiser Blog has had over 4,400 hits - 4 months... an average of 1,100 visits per month.

I invite everyone to consider submitting short articles, photos, links or even ideas to make this blog a further success and to make it a diverse blog made up of genealogists with all kinds of interests and experiences. Share with others some of your stories.

Tomorrow is Tax Day, but it is also the deadline for submissions for the Tri-State Packet - our members quarterly journal.

TSGS member, Ken Gilkey is in the hospital... remember him in your prayers.

See you tonight!
John G. West, TSGS President

THE CAPTAIN'S LOG –TSGS News

TSGS members should have gotten your copy of the March issue, by now, of our quarterly - The Tri-State Packet. Brenda Legate is doing an excellent job getting out a nicely done journal and ensuring that we get it on time. Send her a note of encouragement; but, even better, send her something to publish in the next issue and some encouragement. The deadline for material for the June Packet is April 15. As President, I wish to publically congratulate Brenda on getting the Packet out early and for doing a great job of typing and editing these last three issues!

Last Wednesday we posted a 1994 TSGS Seminar Photo from the First Mate's Photo Album and asked everyone how many people could they identify in that photo. I have not got any responses. Brenda Jerome, Mary Lou Bevers and I have tried to identify all of them, but we are still not sure who the man is in the last chair on the left by the wall and the lady seated across from him. Of course, one person is almost completely blocked by another, I sure recognize the hairdo, but can not remember who she is. We know the identity of the rest. This coming Wednesday, we will reveal the names of all the known ones... please let me know the names of the ones not yet identified, let me know if you know the others, too! Here is my email: John G. West (click on my name or copy & paste the following) jgw.mylines@gmail.com .

A follow-up on the ice storm at the West home. Last Friday, I took a vacation day and with a lot of great help from Chris Myers, we cut up and dragged the limbs to the sidewalk for later pick-up by the city trash contractors. The company sent out a special yard waste pick-up service this Friday to get bagged yard waste, plus limbs & sticks in barrels/trash containers. They picked up the 12 – 55 gallon trash bags and four containers of sticky pine limbs. Then in the afternoon the special crew came through and picked up the fifty feet of limbs we had stacked about 3.5 feet high and about 100 four foot long limbs about 2-4 inches in diameter. The 12 to 15 foot logs were cut up into about 4 cords of firewood that I am taking a pick-up load to work every day or so. Where I work, they have a fireplace in the main office and they are taking advantage of all of this firewood to heat up the office and reduce the fuel bills! It is so nice to look at our front & back yards and not see all of those limbs and plastic bags!!!

The regular TSGS Web Site is nearing 1000 unique hits according to our ClustrMaps Counter with visits from 23 countries including the USA. Ireland has 15 hits with the United Kingdom at 9 hits. We have 8 countries besides the USA with 2 or more hits. In the U.S., we still have not had any visitors from Hawaii, North Dakota, West Virginia, Maine & Vermont. If you know someone from one of these states, especially a genealogy friend, ask them to visit our web site! Our TSGS Web Site went over 56,000 hits a couple days ago! The TSGS Cruiser Blog just registered this morning 2,600 hits since 27 Dec 2008!

Karin Kirsch & Brenda Jerome have been working hard on the SIG's Committee (that is the possible formation of TSGS Special Interest Groups). We have had a Computer Interest Group for a long time and a Celtic group was being suggested by some members. The Long Range Planning Committee is hoping that SIG's might be of value to our members. Karin is preparing a simple, brief survey to pass out at this month's meeting (March 10). If you can not make it to the meeting and would like to fill out the survey let me know at the email addy I have listed earlier in this article. By the way, if anyone has any ideas that might improve TSGS' services to you and other members, please suggest it.

John G. West, TSGS President

PS: I am proud to say that today is my 62nd. Birthday & tomorrow Becky & I will celebrate our 40th. Wedding Anniversary!

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

The second Tuesday of the month is the meeting night for the Tri-State Genealogical Society. This month's meeting is: 10 Feb 2009 at 7:30 PM at Willard Library with Guest Speaker Larry Goss, retired Professor from University of Southern Indiana and serves on the TSGS Board of Directors. He will give his presentation on “Grandma's Photo Album.” At the 6:30 PM HELP Session, Rena Goss will present some information on Ohio Research in the Bayard Room. Come and visit with us. Everyone is welcome... you do not need to be a member to attend our meetings or HELP Sessions.

Don Counts sent this link for us: VA Nationwide Gravesite Locator http://gravelocator.cem.va.gov/j2ee/servlet/NGL_v1

Virginia L. Aldridge, a former TSGS President, has done a very significant job of posting the images of Volume 25 of the Vanderburgh Co., Indiana marriage applications beginning on 18 April 1905 which has the parents' names and more. She has the images of the volume's index and pages 1 thru 206. This site is worth looking at even if you do not have anyone marrying in Vanderburgh County in 1905! A lot of hard work & time went into this project. Here is the link: http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thetiethatbindsour/van_mar/vol_25_index.htm

TSGS is becoming known around the world through our regular web site:
[http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~intsgs/index.html] Since 14 Dec 2008 (less than 2 months) we have had over 670 unique visits by people all over the United States and, now, from 21 countries outside of the USA with six Continents represented. Six countries have recorded visits more than once according to our ClustrMaps Counter. Ireland has visited 11 times! We got a visit from one of the seven or so states that had not visited the last update I gave... welcome aboard, Wyoming! We still have not had visits from Mississippi, Maine, West Virginia, Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Dakota. If you know someone from any of these states ask them to come visit our TSGS regular web site and then check out this TSGS Cruiser Blog!

"Global Interest in TSGS"

With 18 countries outside of the United States visiting out TSGS Web Site, there seems to be sufficient evidence that we have a global interest in our web site. I suspect that being named "User of the Month" by ClustrMaps has led quite a few to our site. We were selected for the month of January 2009 and when the Feb. winners are announced we will still be listed! A visitor (or visitors) of Ireland have clicked onto our web site 10 times since 14 Dec 2008. Since that same date, we have had 606 unique visitors. Five countries have visited us more than twice: Ireland 10, United Kingdom 6, Canada 4, Russian Federation 3, France 3.

In the USA, we still have not had any visitors from Wyoming, North Dakota, West Virginia, Hawaii, Mississippi, Vermont & Maine. Check the USA map for our web site with our ClustrMaps Counter . - JGWest

THE CAPTAIN'S LOG –TSGS News

“TSGS Web Site Chosen:
ClustrMaps User Of The Month!”
From: "ClustrMaps Team"
To: jgw.mylines@gmail.com
Subject: ClustrMaps User Of The Month
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:28:53 +0000

Hi ...
I'm pleased to announce that your site, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~intsgs/index.html
is a winner of the ClustrMaps User Of The Month (there are more than one this month)! CONGRATULATIONS!! I've already updated you to ClustrMaps+ status, and the 'zoomed in maps' (continents) will begin appearing after the next map update (normaly overnight at 0400 GMT, but it also depends on there being an increase by 10% of the number of 'dots' shown, so it may take an extra day or two). I'll shortly be listing your URL on our User of The Month page, and the upgrade stays in effect for 2 years (after which I can easily guarantee plenty of great new features). Best wishes, and thanks for being a loyal ClustrMaps user and fan!
-C.J. on behalf of the ClustrMaps Team

See: http://clustrmaps.wordpress.com/user-of-the-month/ We are one of three chosen for January 2009. We were awarded a free upgrade (Paid Version) that features maps for each continent that shows better detail of where our visitors are from. The North America map shows the state boundaries in the USA. It looks like only about 8 states have not had someone to visit us. Besides the USA we have 11 other countries visit our site. We have had about 400 unique visits in one month. If anyone knows someone that lives in one of the following states: Wyoming, North Dakota, Mississippi, Vermont, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Maine, West Virginia... please ask them to visit our TSGS Web Site and click on the Guest Book link to leave a message of where they are from. Then we will be able to check to see if they got charted. - Submitted by JGWest

THE CAPTAIN'S LOG –TSGS News

Last night's TSGS meeting at Willard Library was actually well attended for a very cold January night. Becky West had a group of 7 set in on her HELP Session & Connie Conrad gave her power point presentation for a group of 17. We normally have between 30 & 50 people to make our monthly meetings, but January & Febuary are lucky to get 10 to 15. The above photo was taken by me as I was explaining this blog. I told them that if they hung their heads or tried to otherwise hide themselves that I would single them out - everyone is looking at the camera! Three individuals are along my right side and the Secretary is to my left and were not included in this photo. BTW, that is not my teleprompter, but rather Connie's laptop for her upcoming power point program.

The Society voted last night to authorize the Book Acquisition Committee to purchase up to $2,000 of research materials for the library... this is the standard amount allocated to this committee.

It was announced that the Board voted to postpone our annual seminar for 2009 until 2010. This move was made to decide if we should continue having seminars or try to attempt another method of providing genealogy related programs. It was noted that the economy would likely have an adverse effect on this year's attendance.

The ClustrMaps Counter shows that we just got a hit yesterday from the ninth country outside of the USA on our regular TSGS Web Site! See our site at: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~intsgs/index.html

John G. West, TSGS President

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

More Notes...

From Chris Myers ~ The Evansville Public Library has some very high resolution scans of Photos and a couple of early City Directories online.
http://evpl.org/research/digitalcollections/

Don Counts honored as a "HERO" in The Veteran's Voice [December 2008]. http://www.theveteransvoice.com/Hero.html

Reminder ~ Tomorrow night TSGS will hold its monthly membership meeting. Please come meet with us , you do not need to be a member to attend our meetings. At 6:30 PM for the HELP Session, Becky West will make you laugh and make you cry as she tells you her "Journey to the Beginning" - her adoption story. She has a lot of "how to" and some entertaining short stories. Connie Conrad will present the program for our regular meeting that starts at 7:30 PM. Her power point presentation "So You Think It Doesn't Exist" will entertain and inform you of ways to find elusive records. Stop by our meeting at Willard Library and tell me what you think about our blog.

Follow-up on the photo submitted by Don Counts concerning J.D. Ritzy's Fantasy of Lights, the annual event raised $142,000 for the Easter Seals Foundation for the Evansville Rehabilitation Center.

The ClustrMaps counter on our regular TSGS Web Site tells us that the site has been visited by people from 8 countries outside of the United States since 14 December 2008. And the old counter registers over 54, 660 "hits" since it started in 1997. The site usually gets fairly low hit numbers, but since we developed the blog and added a few more things to our site, the numbers have climbed significantly. Around Thanksgiving we reached the 52,000 mark which means that in about 6 weeks, the site has had over 2,660 hits! See our site at: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~intsgs/index.html

THE CAPTAIN'S LOG –TSGS News

Another poll is over. Interesting results: 42.8% thought it was the ClustrMap Counter that was the new item on the TSGS Web Site; 28.6% said the new thing was the Meeting Schedule on the main page; two choices attracted 28.6% total for photo album update & other. I would say that all choices (except other) would be valid picks with the Meeting Schedule being the newest of all. This poll was developed to encourage everyone to actually look at our web site to see what is on it and to point out all the new things on our TSGS Web Site. The meeting schedule for the current month on the main page is a significant change and should be very helpful to get a quick look at who will present what at our up-coming meeting. I will take it down within a few days after each meeting to put up the next meeting. The ClustrMap is a cool new counter showing where our visitors live and it has shown me that 8 countries outside the USA has visited our site. We have had 5 hits from a person or persons from Ireland. It would be neat to hear from some of these visitors from other countries, of course, it may be genealogists on vacation or military personnel. -by JGWest

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Researchers are familiar with Willard Library's Cox Collection, which contains a great deal of information on Posey County families, but some may not know that this collection contains a number of photographs of individuals and tombstones. Work is underway to photocopy all photographs and file them in alphabetical order. Among the family photographs are those for the following: Allison, Calvin, Carroll, Cox, Endicott, Fletchall, Knowles, Marvel, Montgomery and Odell-Camp. These photographs will be of great value to researchers and we'll keep you informed of the progress of this work. - Submitted by Brenda Jerome

THE CAPTAIN'S LOG -TSGS News

Another Survey/Poll has closed. We have a new record of 15 participants. The question was:
When was your favorite Christmas time?
As a kid ...................... 8 (53%)
As a young parent ...... 5 (33%)
As an older parent ...... 2 (14%)
As a Grandparent ....... 0 (00%)

I was not sure how well this poll would be for our visitors, but as we had an increase in visitors the number voting increased. I thought "Christmas as a kid" would be the majority choice, but I thought "as a young parent" or "as a grandparent" would be the race for second place. I am a grandparent and, although, I had many great Christmases as a kid, I voted for being a young parent. With three sons, I really enjoyed playing Santa each year until the last one stopped believing in Santa. So, I guess of our non-scientific poll with a small sampling, that Christmas is best enjoyed as we are young and younger the better. Thanks to all who took time to make a selection. Some time today, I will try to create a new survey. I could use some ideas if you want to send me some... we want to try to have something related to genealogy or history with exceptions being around some of the holidays or other special events. Check back later today to see if I came up with something. And, as always, if you did not have a chance to vote on this poll, you may make a comment to this article telling us how you would have voted - you can also make the comment anonymously.

The TSGS regular Web Site has really jumped in people visiting the site since we added a guestbook and a link to this new TSGS Cruiser Blog. We generally got about 20-30 visits a month at the most - this was to check what the next meeting program was going to be. On Nov. 21, I happened to be the 52000th. visitor since the first visitor in 1996 (counter near bottom of page). This morning we are at 54361 - in about 40 days we have had 2,361 visits. That is not 2,361 different people, but the number of times people have looked at the main page. Every time you exit the page and then re-visit, the counter registers another hit (as long as there has been a short lapse between visits). On that web site, I have added a new gadget that counts what is known as "unique visits" located at the top of the page. It might look like an advertisement with a world map on it. A colorful square logo, that says "Visitors Locations" - it is from ClustrMaps and you can click this to get a new page with a large map with red dots from wherever anyone visits our page. And it tells how many have made a visit to this site and where from! Now, "unique visits" mean that for each of us, this counter only will register only one of our visits per a 24 hour period... you can visit 20 times and the lower counter will rack up another 20 "hits" but only one will be added to the count on the map counter. This is neat to check often as it shows where we live (as to the address of the Internet Server Provider [ISP] where you live). We have had visits from 7 countries outside of the USA and since Dec. 14 the web site has had 221 unique visits. Location of 219 are known as to address and plotted on the map (2 visits were from servers that did not have an address known). You can visit the regular TSGS Web Site by clicking on the TSGS Cruiser Blog graphic of the blue boat in the right-hand column... there are several links on the right that says "Visit the TSGS Web Site." - by JGWest