Although Stephen Morse’s website isn’t new to me, it has been quite some time since I had visited it. For those of you new to family history research, it is a true GeneaGem.
Originally, One-Step Webpages was best known for ships’ passenger lists and for the handy system to find enumeration districts from street addresses in the more recent U.S. censuses. In fact, the last time I checked out the website was probably before the 1940 census was released four years ago.
A genealogy buddy told me about a feature she found on the website, which drew me in to take a closer look.
For first time visitors, the “home” page is actually the whole website, filled with tons of links.
One-Step Webpages by Stephen P. Morse
At first glance, the reader will notice the links to the ships’ passenger lists, but the gray box in the upper left corner is actually the “table of contents” for the website.
Website Directory
The passenger lists and census information are some of the older items on the site and many have successfully used those links. However, there are eleven other categories of information, which I suspect many have never seen.
The one that caught my eye was Foreign Alphabets, since some of the Slovak church registers I read switch from our standard alphabet to the Cyrillic alphabet over night and remain that way for 5-10 years at a time.
I clicked on the link and then entered “Michael Scerbak” into the English to Russian translation box:
His name can certainly be spelled many different ways, but even just using the first couple of examples allowed me to find his name in the records.
There is actually a long section called “Dealing with Characters in Foreign Alphabets.”
If you have Jewish ancestry there is a section with links to the Holocaust and Eastern Europe, along with links to Genetic Genealogy (DNA).
That’s not even all! Besides links to U.S. census records, there are links to censuses of New York, Canada and Britain. Other choices include learning how the Soundex indexing system works, a section on different calendars used around the world and maps, and, lastly, an interesting looking list called “Births, Deaths and Other Vital Records,” which, among other things, shows how to find birth and death dates in the same record.
Each link on the site clearly marked with a $ sign indicates that it goes to a subscription site.
Steve Morse’s site is so much more than just a finding tool for locating addresses in census enumeration districts. It’s well worth a visit.
And if you ever get a chance to hear Steve Morse speak, take advantage! He is a very engaging and interesting speaker.