Do you know what country your ancestors were from? If so, you should check out the SIG (Special Interest Group) mailing lists. These are online discussion groups for researchers to ask questions and to receive news from the JewishGen volunteers about new resources that are coming online at the website.
I subscribe to only four SIG mailing lists:
Gesher Galicia SIG (Galicia, where the Levites/Lewites/Levitt family was from)
H-SIG (Hungary, where the Handlers and Hollanders were from)
Romania SIG (Romania, where the Goldstein (possibly Yancowitz) family was from)
Ukraine SIG (Ukraine, where the Segal family was from)
You can even search archived messages within each SIG for surnames and other topical information.
The mailing list subscription page looks like this for me:
However, there are 31 possible SIGs to subscribe to ranging from DNA to rabbinic genealogy to Early American.
It occurred to me this morning that I wanted to be sure that all JewishGen users were aware of this (free!) benefit because in each of the SIG emails I got today (and no, they don't all have daily posts), there was an update on the KehilaLinks projects (which I have shared before at KehilaLinks at JewishGen) noting that the KehilaLinks page for Farming Communities of New Jersey had been updated. I don't know if the page for Woodbine was updated, but this web page has good information about the history of the town that my mother-in-law and her mother before her grew up in. Both the town-specific page and the main page give a wonderful sense of what life was like in rural southern New Jersey at the turn of the last century.Take advantage of all that JewishGen has to offer, and if you are able, consider making a donation to this non-profit organization, not only because it's doing great work, but a donation of at least $100 gives you greater flexibility in searching their databases.
