Ever been wanting to map out your family tree in an intuitive format and work on it collaboratively with other family members? Check out itsourtree.com, which is essentially a social network site for your extended family.

So far I've found genealogy software to be quite clumsy, but Hamburg, Germany based OSN Online Social Networking GmbH has build a pretty solid foundation for making family trees intuitive and fun.

With my family being spread across (at least) two continents, it's actually helped get back in touch with some of the folks that I haven't seen in years.

The approach taken here is quite interesting as it allows one to add a person to the family tree, enter their email address to invite them and let them modify the tree. The result is a recursive chain reaction of spouses adding their side of the family.

Just a few weeks ago my mom and I talked about our family history. I find it interesting to know where I came from and its quite exciting, like a little treasure hunt, to try to follow leads and discover potential new distant relatives. And it also just makes sense to know a little bit about your ancestors' medical history for the benefit of your own health.

Luckily, my mom's dad has a relatively rare last name (the map to the right is a distribution of known people in Germany with that last name, and there aren't that many even today). Armed with that, few family records, and my mom's wits and ingenuity, she was able to dig up quite a bit of information. Using sites such as FamilySearch.org, ellisislandrecords.org, and random bits of information revealed through various search engines, we've found records reaching all the way back to the 17^th century (a wedding record from 1696).

She told me about a ship, the John Bertram, and sent me the ship's passenger manifest that apparently carried some of our ancestors (a couple aged 58 and 62) from Hamburg, Germany to New York in 1866. A Google search for "John Bertram" turned up a random geocities page with more information about the ship.

The U.S., later Hamburg, ship JOHN BERTRAM was built as an "extreme clipper" at East Boston, by Ewell & Jackson, in the short time of 61 days, and launched on 9 December 1850. She was built under the supervision of Capt. Glidden for the Glidden & Williams Line of Boston-San Francisco packets, and was owned jointly by Glidden & Williams, of Boston, and Flint, Peabody & Co, of San Francisco. She was named after the well-known Salem sea captain and merchant, John Bertram. 1,080/778 tons (old/new measurement); 173/180/190 x 37 x 20 feet(keel/deck/overall length x beam x depth of hold); her figurehead was a representation of an eagle on the wing, and on her stern was a medallion bust of her namesake.

Excuse me for a minute while my mind imagines an epic motion picture style flashback to 1866 where the farmers couple Johann (58) and Maria Lubsch (62) venture on a months-long journey, presumably leaving behind most of their belongings (how do you pack up a farm?), and possibly fight fierce weather conditions on their way to the New World. It's not like it was a Disney Cruise. And I'm guessing they didn't call ahead to make hotel reservations, considering Graham Bell didn't speak into his first phone roughly ten years later on March 10, 1876.

We have yet to figure out exactly what happened to this couple. Why did they leave? Where did they go? Did they have kids? (hint: she probably didn't, but he might have). We don't know, and while itsourtree.com isn't going to answer those questions either, it's encouraged and helped us organize our family history.