It took Ron Wild about 10 years of visiting genealogical libraries around the country, perusing microfilm and searching through dusty archives, to trace the family line of his wife, Eva Mary, six generations to her great-great-grandfather, Joel Calvin Taylor, a farmer, born in Constable, N.Y. in 1824
It took Mr. Wild just a few hours recently to uncover the 44 previous generations. All he had to do this time was log on to MyTrees.com, and after plugging in a set of family names he had accumulated over the last decade, he learned about Mrs. Wild's colonial ancestors in New England, most notably Jeremiah Whitney, a distinguished Englishman who landed in Plymouth, Mass. in 1635. Then he took those names, with others obtained from databases at FamilySearch.org, and further traced her family to 10th-century France, with ties to royalty.
"You want to search the hard way, it can take 20 hours just to find one event, one birth," said Mr. Wild, 61, of Toronto, a marketing director at Family Chronicle, a genealogical magazine. "The information was there all the time. I just didn't know how to find it."

The internet-- with its sources of databases, easy access, and relatively quick response time -- is helping many armchair historians gain glimpses into their pasts.
But novice researchers need to be careful. While genealogical websites are springing up all the time, most of their information is very limited. Researchers may have to visit several other sites, and some of the information they uncover may not always be accurate. And several sites charge for services that consumers can find free elsewhere.
Even a wildly popular internet site, www.ellisisland.org, which offers free information on some 22 million immigrates entering New York's Ellis Island from 1892 to 1924 has its limitations.
Seasoned genealogists say the information, while useful and accurate, is basic and serves only to prompt additional searches. And users may wait a long time for access to the information. Although the site's server has tripled its capacity since its April debut, Peg Zitko, a spokeswoman for the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, the nonprofit group that runs the site, still advises would-be users "to set your alarm clock for 2 a.m." The site couldn't handle the eight million hits it received on the first date, and the server crashed.
Site visitors can view manifests from the ship companies that transported the immigrants and learn a little bit about the passangers' plans, based on questionnaires they were required to fill out. (During my visit to the site, I learned that my grandfather, Owen Kilgannon, who arrived in this country from Liverpool, England, in 1920, had $60 in his pocket and planned on staying in America "always.")

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Extensive links can also be found at MyTrees.com Many names are already organized into family trees. And the site simultaneously searches FamilySearch.org and other internet site entries. It has customized search engines that scour the Internet for name matches and delivers them in alphabetical order. Memberships cost $100 a year, or $15.00 per month. The site permits users to barter for a few free months, however, by submitting their own personal family data to the site.

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