"One Step" Closer to an Old Friend

I first encountered the work of Stephen P. Morse as a young engineer when I read his "8086 Primer", a down to earth (well, to an electrical engineer) introduction to the Intel 8086 micro processor. So when I discovered his One Step genealogical web site ( http://stevemorse.org/ ) many years later it was like meeting an old, trusted friend again. It was an even greater thrill to find him making several presentations at the 2009 National Genealogy Society conference.

If you are not familiar with his One Step site, you should be. He has teamed up with several equally bright and motivated individuals to provide a free, highly intelligent search front-end that interfaces with other free and/or commercially available databases (notably, the Ellis Island records and the US Census). His tools provide a superior way to search these records, often allowing searches and providing results in ways not possible on the original sites.

In the first session that I attended (titled “Playing Hide and Seek in the US Census”) he provided some background on how the US government organizes and categorizes the census results as well as a look forward to the availability of the 1940 census information (due for release in 2012). Of particular interest to the "I want it now" generation of genealogists was the revelation that these records will NOT be searchable by name at first, since it will take some time for Ancestry (and, presumably others) to key in the names and create the databases after the data is released.

Until that work has been completed, genealogists will have to rely on the work being done by Dr. Morse and his team of volunteers as they work to provide tools to allow searches by address and enumeration district (which, as I just learned, is an area that can be canvassed by a single Census taker).

The second session I attended was “What Color Ellis Island Search Form Should I use?” The useful content this presentation can be summarized in one sentence: when searching for information about immigrants passing through Ellis Island on his One Step web site, use the Gold search page. But there is so much more to this story....

Dr. Morse recounted his love/hate relationship with the Ellis Island foundation that began with the introduction of their web site in April, 2001. He was frustrated by the interface that was available at that time and created an innovative way to create his own way to submit queries to the Ellis Island search engine.

Word of his web page spread quickly, and thus began a 5 year (so far) technological and legal dance between Dr. Morse and the Ellis Island foundation. In that time he has developed a series of improved search pages with features that, usually, found their way into the Ellis Island search engine. This journey was briefly interrupted by a lawsuit that was soon resolved with the unintended consequence (to the Ellis Island Foundation) of making the database in its entirety available to Dr. Morse. As a result, his web page now has search capabilities not available on the Ellis Island site. His efforts have also made it possible to search and locate the various ships manifests directly.

His One Step web site also has links supporting enhanced searching for many other genealogical data sources, including ports of entry. I have been searching (unsuccessfully, for several years) for information about my Great Grandfathers trip from Norway (via England) to the United States. Having gained a deeper understanding and appreciation for how the One Step search engines works I used it to check again when I got home from the conference and found it!