STEVE MORSE'S ONE-STEP PROGRAMS
©2020 Donald R. Snow - Last updated 2020-06-22
Go to the Utah Valley Technology and
Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .
ABSTRACT: Steve Morse's website --
https://stevemorse.org/ -- has many search tools for family history including U.S. immigration, censuses, other databases, and conversion routines. He is a computer scientist who recognized the difficulty of searching many large databases with the search tools on them, so he has written what he calls One-Step programs. These take the minimal data that you enter and put it into various combinations for better searches of that database. He started with the Ellis Island immigration database and now has more than 100 tools for it and other databases. We will discuss some of these and show how to use them. The notes for this class with active links and related articles are on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow
(snowd@math.byu.edu)
of Provo and St. George, Utah.
- These notes with active
internet links and related articles
are posted on
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
- Tips: (1) To put an icon on your
desktop for
these notes, or any webpage, just drag the
icon from in front
of the address in your browser onto your
desktop.
(2) To open a link, but keep your
place in these notes,
hold down the Control (CTRL) key while
clicking the link.
- The problem for today: What are Steve
Morse's One-Step programs and how do you use them?
STEVE MORSE'S WEBSITE
- Dr. Stephen P. Morse, PhD from NYU in Computer Engineering, is also a genealogist and realized that the search engines on some large family history databases are not user-friendly nor efficient, so he started writing what he calls One-Step programs to improve the searches.
- His website is
https://stevemorse.org/
-- It's easy to remember and the .org means it's non-profit
- Home page left side has a complete list of all his more than 100 One-Step programs -- at top is a Category Menu to go directly to any part below
- Before using any of the programs it helps to reead the relevant parts of his "How-To" article on the home page --
https://stevemorse.org/onestep/onestep3.htm
CATEGORIES OF TOOLS ON STEVE MORSE'S ONE-STEP WEBPAGE
- IMMIGRATION -- New York, Ellis Island, Castle Garden, All New York immigration, ship lists, manifests
- IMMIGRATION -- Other ports - Baltimore, Boston, Galveston, Philadelphia, etc.
- US CENSUSES - Census information, searching by name, Enumeration Districts
- PHONETIC MATCHING -- Soudex, Daitch-Mokotoff, and other systems
- CANADIAN AND UK CENSUSES
- NEW YORK STATE CENSUSES
- VITAL RECORDS -- U.S. Social Security, accessing FamilySearch, NY City and New Jersey birth, marriage, and death records, naturalization records
- CALENDARS AND MAPS -- Calendar conversions, elapsed time, map programs, latitude and longitude to and from addresses
- ALPHABETS AND LANGUAGE -- Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Greek, Arabic, Cyrillic characters
- HOLOCAUST AND EAST EUROPE
- GENETIC GENEALOGY -- DNA
- JEWISH RECORDS -- East European, Russian, Israeli
- CREATING YOUR OWN SEARCH TOOLS -- DIY
- ABOUT STEVE MORSE -- Bio, history, publications, awards
- MISCELLANEOUS -- Computer and internet info, e.g. Last-Minute bidding on eBay, Googling helps, computer helps
DEMOS, EXAMPLES, AND COMMENTS
- To use some of Morse's One-Step programs regularly, you can set up a bookmark folder for their URLs.
- General search tips: start with smallest "reasonable" terms and add more terms as needed; any term you search for that is not in the record eliminates many possible hits; Example, start with only surname and first initial, and only add more terms to narrow the search, if you get too many hits
- Steve Morse searches have the filled-in form in one browser tab and the search results in another tab, so you can go back and edit the search terms easily.
- U.S. Immigration and examples
- Immigration is an important part of family history and searches are not simple.
- Good information about U.S. immigration is in Morse's How-To article on home page
- Good FamilySearch Wiki article on U.S. immigration at https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/United_States_Immigration_Online_Genealogy_Records
- Examples from Steve Morse's How-To article -- Irving Berlin and
Albert Einstein
- His "One-Step Immigration Triangle": Passenger Names <==> Ship Arrivals <==> Microfilm Rolls
- Census examples and enumeration districts
- Social Security Death Index
(SSDI) examples
- You have to select database to search and there are several SSDIs
- Different SSDIs yield additional info
- Historical Records on FamilySearch (LDS Records) -- examples
- Conversion Programs
- Addresses to and from latitude and longitude
- Elapsed Time
CONCLUSIONS
- Steve Morse's One-Step programs are easy to use and usually give more complete searches of large databases.
- You could experiment with some of his programs to see how they work and see if you want to use any.
- Even if you don't use any of his programs regularly, remember the kinds of
things he has for when you do need them.