What’s up? Ancestry was down

Ancestry.com and associated sites (Rootsweb and Find a Grave) were down for Monday, part of Tuesday and intermittently today due to a DDoS attack. Think of it like a bunch of people all dialing the same phone number at the same time (and keep dialing for a period of time) to make the lines busy, while people with legitimate reasons for calling aren’t able to get through.

There’s a post about it here.

The site is still slow, but should be back to regular service soon.

If you aren’t sure whether a site is down just for you or for everyone, try this site: IsUp.me. or www.downforeveryone.com (those are both the same site).

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Type the web address in the box and hit Enter on your keyboard. The site sends a message to the site you are trying to access and tells you if it was successful or not.

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At just before 5 p.m. June 18, Ancestry was down (still/again). Rootsweb was down, but Find a Grave was working.

Czech heritage

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We had a gentleman stop by the society’s room today looking for information on how to research Czech genealogy.

I’m no expert.

We looked up some names in the Czech obits 1937-1980 book. The index lists the deceased, as well as others listed in the obits, such as survivors and pall bearers.

I also found a couple of sites that can help you get started researching Czech family history.

Get started with Czech genealogy
5 Places to Begin a Search for Czech Ancestors

Last year, I attended the Czech picnic in Fort Dodge. It was a happy accident. I was delivering Messenger bound books to Marion Pliner for indexing. She insisted that I stay and attend the picnic. It was a nice event.

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I haven’t heard when the next Czech picnic will be, but if you have Czech ancestry and want to find out more, it could be helpful to connect with others with similar interests.

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This table was full of family history items brought in for people to look at.