Maine Genealogy site grows from one man's obsession

Five years ago, Christopher Dunham created the Maine Genealogy site to share some of the genealogy resources he had collected—and he’s been adding content ever since.

On the home page, you’ll find a search box for Maine people, with records for marriages, divorces, deaths, court records, cemetery records, passenger lists, enlistment records, pension records, obituaries, and death notices. The search box for Maine Places brings up matches in the Maine Resource Guide, the Legal History Database, and the USGS Feature Names. The site also includes a reference section for books, places, maps, and a census guide. Clicking on a book title within the book search leads you to the referenced tome in Google Books.

“Some of the databases—such as an index of Maine divorces from 1892 to 1903—are the product of days spent at the Maine State Archives, and can be found nowhere else on the web,” Dunham says. “In the past year, I've added a database of almost 23,000 burials in Maine's veterans' cemeteries and an obituary database that is updated daily, and is nearing 50,000 entries.”

Using Ning to create a social network, last summer Dunham “replaced an older genealogy forum with the Maine Genealogy Network, which allows visitors to post queries, upload family photographs and videos, and blog about their research. I'm hoping that it attracts researchers to the site willing to share their resources and expertise, and turn one man's obsession into a collaborative effort.”

Check out the site and help it grow!