Why the First Families Project

In the early days of the World Wide Web we laid out a White Paper for The USGenWeb Project that envisioned among other things:

"Together, the USGenWeb sites provide a foundation for the publishing of family histories on the Web. As the library matures, more and more researchers can cite the on-line references in their own research, and actually link to the source documents which are on line."

Fifteen years later this goal remains largely unrealized.

It is not my objective to analyze the past here, or discuss where and why The USGenWeb Project lost its fervor and initiative, Many - indeed most researchers today had no interest in genealogy when the USGenWeb Project began. If the saying is true that most genealogy researchers spend about 3 years in the endeavor, then either find what they want to know or give up on their brick walls, then it has been 5 generations now since the genesis of The USGenWeb Project.

It is NOW TIME to systematically publish our family histories on-line. The "First Families Project" is about pursuing that goal. It is our objective to tell their stories in an interesting and compelling way while at the same time documenting our sources to aid other researchers in their efforts.

It's a rock soup kind of thing and will benefit all researchers greatly.

Families generally migrated together and married close neighbors. As each family is documented it will help to tell the story of the overall community. For any given community there were some couple of dozen "First Families" followed by hundreds, then thousands of pioneer families.

So, why focus on "First Families?"

While we may not now know the connection, the "First Families" form the basis of all of our research. The Civil War is our great disconnect. Most families today can easily remember or document their families back to the war, but lose them in the prior 100 years from the founding of this country in the mid to late 1700s. We find ourselves constantly churning through these hundred years of records not knowing who else has done a similar search and how these all fit together. If we can document these families and their migrations, we can create a foundation for all future researchers to build upon.

Let's join together to make this First Families Project a reality.