Finding Your Roots, FasterFinding Your Roots, Faster

When she was three years old, Lillian O'Donnell arrived in the United States on Dec. 15, 1913, on the 600-foot steamship Cymric, which was launched in 1898--and sunk by a German submarine three years after the child's trip. The ship's manifest shows that Lillian traveled with her parents, Edward and Laura O'Donnell, from Liverpool, England, to New York City. Their final destination: Lake Forest, Ill.

All that information took just a few seconds to find on the Statue of Liberty--Ellis Island Foundation's Ellisisland.org Web site, which recently got an upgrade to Oracle's 9i database and clustering software. The genealogical site has had 3 billion hits since it went online in April 2001. What the Web site won't tell you is that, for years in the future, Lillian spoiled her oldest grandson with fresh-baked pork pies on his frequent visits to her Chicago home. And, boy, were they good.