Free Republic

John Howland may not be as famous as William Bradford, John Carver and Myles Standish, notable passengers on the Mayflower that landed in Massachusetts in 1620. Yet Howland, who boarded the ship as Carver's servant, probably had a greater impact on the history of the United States than any of them. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will sit down for Thanksgiving dinner Thursday unaware that they owe their very existence to Howland, who almost never even made it to the New World. Howland fell overboard in the middle of the Atlantic during a gale

LARS LUNDIN and his database are matchmakers of a sort, trading in information about matches made long ago. Genealogists send him family trees, and his computer compares them with other family trees in a database of more than two million current and former Danish citizens. Each month, he estimates, his computer finds more than 1,000 connections between cousins. Projects like Mr. Lundin's are becoming increasingly common as both amateur and professional genealogists use the Web to pool resources, compare notes and connect family histories. Some, like Mr. Lundin, do it for fun, while others are building companies that offer higher-quality...