Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

What Was I Doing in 2001?

It’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun time!

This week’s challenge asks:

Do you recall what you were doing in 2001? Family, school, work, hobbies, technology, genealogy, vacations, etc.?

At first, I wasn’t sure how much I could remember about 2001. After all, that was 25 years ago! But once I started thinking about where I was working, what technology I was using, and what I was doing with genealogy, pieces of that year began falling into place.

And, appropriately enough, I used today’s technology to help me reconstruct my life with the technology of 2001.

Work and School

In 2001, I was the librarian and technology coordinator at Nemaha Valley High School in Seneca, Kansas.

By then, technology was a major part of my job. I managed the computers throughout the high school along with a network of Novell servers. One of those servers handled our email.

Think about that for a moment. Today we take cloud-based email, Google services, wireless networks and Internet access almost everywhere for granted. In 2001, I was maintaining the servers and network that made much of our school's technology possible.

I was also a class sponsor.

During the 2000–2001 school year, I was the junior class sponsor. One of the major responsibilities that came with that job was sponsoring the Junior-Senior Prom in April.

When school started again in the fall of 2001, I became the senior class sponsor for the 2001–2002 school year. That meant working with the class as they planned their senior trip and, eventually, graduation.

Thus, much of my life in 2001 revolved around students, the library, computers, servers, networks, prom planning and senior activities.

Church

Mike and I were members of the Seneca United Methodist Church. At the time, the church was pastored by Rev. John and Jenny Collins.

Church has remained an important part of our lives, although the technology used there has certainly changed over the years.

Genealogy

Of course, I was doing genealogy!

By 2001 I was already using The Master Genealogist (TMG) for my genealogy database. I was also sharing my research on the Internet.

Some of my Genealogy from the Heartland material that survives on the Nemaha County KSGenWeb site is actually dated 2001. My Crawford and Currey research was among the information I was putting online.

I was also involved with KSGenWeb. Material I contributed to various Kansas genealogy pages survives today, although some of those pages have moved from their original Internet homes.

RootsWeb was also an important part of online genealogy during this period. I know that at some point I had a RootsWeb FreePages site. FreePages was available by 1999, so it could have been part of my online genealogy world in 2001, although I haven't been able to establish exactly when I started using it.

One thing I discovered while working on this post was just how difficult it can be to reconstruct our early Internet lives. Websites moved. Hosting services disappeared. Links broke. Email addresses changed. Yet pieces of those old sites can still turn up in unexpected places.

Blue Skyways and the Trails

Another part of my online life involved Blue Skyways, a Kansas Internet resource that hosted many early Kansas websites.

I had an account there, and my trails website was associated with it. One surviving reference documents my “Rut Nuts” page as early as 1997.

The name came from our interest in the historic emigrant trails. Mike and I were involved with the Kanza Chapter of the Oregon-California Trails Association (OCTA). Mike had served as the chapter's vice president in 1998 and president in 1999.

Our interest wasn't limited to reading about the trails. We visited trail sites, looked for surviving ruts and swales, visited cemeteries and graves associated with the trails, and were involved in efforts to document and mark trail locations.

That interest was still very much part of our lives around 2001.

What Did the Internet Look Like?

Trying to reconstruct 2001 led me down another rabbit hole: What Internet services actually existed then?

Some things I associate so strongly with the Internet today weren't there yet.

Facebook? No. It wouldn't arrive until 2004.

Gmail? No. Also 2004.

Google Sites? No. That came later.

But many of the tools we used in those early Internet years were already available.

Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail existed. GeoCities existed. RootsWeb was thriving. RootsWeb FreePages offered genealogists space for their own websites. KSGenWeb was well established.

Instead of posting a genealogy question in a Facebook group, we might have posted it to a RootsWeb mailing list, a genealogy message board or a GenWeb site.

Instead of creating a family-history blog, we built websites—often one HTML page at a time.

And instead of relying on Gmail or Microsoft 365 to manage a school's email, I was helping maintain the servers that provided those services locally.

How times have changed!

What About Vacations?

I know that Mike and I traveled extensively in connection with our interest in history and the trails. At some point we followed the Oregon Trail all the way to Portland, Oregon.

However, I haven't been able to prove that particular trip occurred in 2001.

I do know that I had been in Oregon by 1996 because one of my genealogy records documents research I did at the Wasco County Library in The Dalles that year.

Rather than assign a trip to 2001 simply because it seems possible, I'll leave the vacation portion of this challenge with a question mark.

Perhaps another document, photograph or old calendar will eventually provide the answer.

Reconstructing 2001

When I first read this week's challenge, I wasn't sure how much I remembered about 2001.

Then I started asking questions.

What was my job?

Which class was I sponsoring?

What genealogy software was I using?

Did RootsWeb exist?

Did KSGenWeb exist?

Was I using Blue Skyways?

Did Facebook exist?

What about Gmail?

One question led to another, and gradually a picture of 2001 emerged.

I was a librarian and technology coordinator managing computers and Novell servers at Nemaha Valley High School. I was working with teenagers as their class sponsor. Mike and I were active in our church. We were interested in historic trails. And I was already using computers and the Internet extensively for genealogy.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this exercise wasn't simply remembering 2001.

It was discovering that I had left a digital trail of my own.

Twenty-five years later, old genealogy pages, archived websites, reports and other fragments of the early Internet are helping me reconstruct my own story.

As a genealogist, I spend a lot of time following the trails left by my ancestors.

This week, I found myself following mine.