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Ever think about your forebears? Where they originally came from? What cities they spent time in before settling down? Or even what ships they arrived on from overseas?

On Nov. 12 at Beth El Synagogue in East Windsor, renowned genealogist Stephen Morse will deliver his talk "One-Step Web site: A Hodgepodge of Lesser-Known Gems," that instructs those in attendance how to uncover such information about their family's past and much more.

Morse is the founder and operator of the Web site "One Step" Search Pages at stevemorse.org, which contains a large assortment of tools to search and find information about one's descendants.

Morse, who hails from New York and currently resides in San Francisco, said his interest in genealogy extends back to his youth.

"When I was a teenager... I guess I asked my mother questions about her family, and she helped me put together a family tree for her family and for my father's family," Morse told The Jewish State in a phone interview.

He was able to trace back to his great-grandparents on both sides of his family and created an extensive family tree.

Yet for many years thereafter, Morse left untouched in shoeboxes the family trees he had compiled.

In the late 1980s, his wife's cousin came to him, seeking his input on doing research into their family's history.

Though he was glad to help them in their pursuit, he felt inspired to return to his own family's history.

"And I said I'm doing all of this for my wife's family, how about my own family?" he said. "I have all these trees done back in the 1950s that are way out of date."

With his background in computer technology (Morse received a doctorate in electrical engineering from New York University and was the architect of the Intel 8086 chip, the processor used in the original IBM PC), he was able to locate distant relatives from generations ago through the present day.

Then in 1992, the 1920 census was finally unsealed.

"A friend of mine called me and said, You may be interested in this," Morse recalled, "I said, Why would I be interested in that? He said, Go down and take a look at it."

So Morse made the trip down to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and in the course of his research found the census records of one of his grandfathers.

"Well that was exciting," he said. "You never forget your first. I was hooked at that point. Well, if there are these public records of my family that I've never seen before, I want to see them."

Morse's fascination with genealogy grew from that point on. He tried to get his hands on any records about his family that he could find -- ship records, marriage records, etc.

However, he still could not locate the record of the ship his grandfather came over to the United States on.

In 2001, the Web site EllisIsland.org was unveiled that allowed users to access online information about family members.

The Web site was difficult to use with multiple steps and overly trafficked, according to Morse, who spent the evening it was released figuring out how the program worked.

"So the next morning I said instead of wasting my time trying to use their site I could do my own search for them that ties into their site and do it all in one step and not do all of the many steps that they were requiring," he said.

Morse's search worked and he was able to locate his grandfather's ship record.

"I told a few friends who were also interested in genealogy at that time and they told a few people and before I knew it the word just spread," Morse said. "I don't know how it happened, but the word spread like wild fire."

Subsequently, Morse built his Web site and has over the years added more features, such as allowing people to search for family members by address of zip code. He has also been invited to talk to groups throughout the world in order to teach attendees how to carry out their own genealogical research.

Morse downplays the impact he has had on the field, saying he was merely "in the right place at the right time."

"Others could have done similar things, but I happened to have the interest at that time and the knowledge about how to do Web-based search forms," he said.

Morse's "Hodgepodge" talk is hosted by the Beth El Synagogue Genealogy Club and will take place on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 7:30 p.m. Beth El Synagogue is located at 50 Maple Stream Road, East Windsor. For additional information or to RSVP, call the synagogue office at (609) 443-4454.