While many geneabloggers were giving out Puckerbrush Blog Awards for Excellence over the past few weeks, those of us who remember the Cow Hampshire blog were bemoaning its sudden disappearance. Many of us remember Janice Brown’s sense of humor and the great posts at her site.
Well I sort of had a “I coulda had a V-8″ slap the forehead kind of moment this evening. To the consternation of those around me I yelled “the wayback machine” and no I was not channeling a character from Back To The Future.
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you blog in a web address and look at the archived pages of that website. So I took “http://cowhampshire.blogharbor.com/blog” and entered it into the field, pressed Take Me Back and viola! Looky what I found:
An replica of Janice’s blog as it was archived and appeared on July 3, 2007!
Genealogists should also keep the Internet Archive Wayback Machine in mind for tracking down those sites that may have disappeared or that may have changed substantially. I find it can be hit or miss but this “Internet time machine” has provided some valuable information for me!
Some good news about the defunct Cow Hampshire blog http://tr.im/ppzd #genealogy
Ah, yes, but the Cowhampshire blog was one of those where a couple sentences appeared in each entry, and you had to click on ‘more’ to read more. The WayBack Machine only archived the main page, not the full entries. So the visual look of the blog is preserved, but most of the content isn’t there.
I sent an email to BlogHarbor, Janice’s blog server, asking what happened to her? No reply. I used their service for a while about 5 years ago… maybe they just deleted the blog if she discontinued her service.
Some good news about the defunct Cow Hampshire blog http://tr.im/ppzd #genealogy