Hello all!
I am still catching up & in all the e-mail messages discovered that
RootsWeb (the people who sponsor this list & the majority of the
USGenWeb Project county pages for FREE) are having a bit of a finacial
crunch. I'd like to encourage anyone who would like to help out to
read
the message at the end of this that was composed by someone on the
listowner list. Brian & Karen at Rootsweb sponsor a separate project,
which I've, personally, found very helpful & you are all invited to
join
in order to help out if you wish - although by no means do you have
to(!). The basics of what you get if you join is an itemized list of
any surnames you're researching which show up on the databases they
sponsor, as they get them in. For example, the last mailing I
recieved
from them showed the following which they had just uploaded to their
server:
-------
------------------------------------------------------------------
Louisiana Pre-1908 Homestead and Cash Entry Patents, from the General
Land Office's Automated Records Project.
This database has about 200,000 records. Its URL is
http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/laland/laland.pl
The information below is a subset of what will be available at the URL
above. If you'd like to go straight to the complete record, skipping
the home page of the dataset, you can just replace XXXX in
http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/wisconsin/wifull.pl?XXXX
with the digits appearing at the end of the line (under the column
titled "offset").
Last name First name Init Date County
Acres
Offset
CATO HENRY R 1860 Claiborne
0.0000
20382637
CATO HENRY R 1860 Claiborne
52.9700
20382899
CATO MADISON 1881 Calcasieu
0.0000
12792738
CATO MADISON 1881 Calcasieu
160.0000
12793000
CATO WILLIAM 1882 DeSoto
80.5600
22370096
CATO WILLIAM 1888 DeSoto
80.5600
22558022
--------
------------------------------------------------------------------
This was, in addition, MANY other CATO mentions in their new databases
(that we had already found by other traditional resources, but what
if
we hadn't found it already &/or what if you're researching a name that
doesn't have a reference page like the CATO page? Like my ROCKA
line!).
Also, you get a list of everyone researching your surname(s) which can
be a great help. This can be achieved by a $1/month contribution
($12/year gets you a membership - and this is the ONLY money they get
in
for doing this).
This will be the only one of these letters you see from me for at the
very most, the next 6 months, so don't worry about having to put up
with
numerous fundraisers on the list!!
Anyhow, the following is one of the suggested letters that one of the
many other listownsers suggested that we send:
Bonnie
>>>>>>>>>>
Dear list subscriber,
You are all probably aware that this mailing list is made possible
through the cooperation of RootsWeb.
Depending on your own involvement with other mailing lists, USGenWeb,
etc
you may or may not know of the magnitude of support that RootsWeb has
been providing to genealogical community.
The interest in the Internet, Genealogy, and USGenWeb have resulted in
a level of website activity for USGenWeb and other genealogy sites at
RootsWeb that has been constantly increasing.
When the MAISER mailing lists fell victim to a mass commercial email
attack
and were shut down RootsWeb took over the hosting of hundreds of
mailing
lists. In a recent status report Brian mentioned a number like 2
million
messages a day being handled through the RootsWeb mailing lists.
Additionally RootsWeb is the host for the Roots Surname List and a
host
of other services to the genealogical community. If you have not done
so
you may want to goto to
http://www.rootsweb.com/ and explore a bit.
RootsWeb was founded and is funded principaly by the person efforts of
Dr.
Brian Leverich and Karen Isaacson. It is largely their time AND money
that
keeps RootsWeb consistantly providing such great service. In their
effort
to provide as much data and service for free as possible to the
genealogical community, they have been very low key in asking for any
financial contributions. There is however a mechanism to provide
support
through RootsWeb memberships ($12/year) and Sponsorships ($24/year).
The
details are at
http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/how-to-subscribe.html
.
If
you haven't already done so, are in a position to do so, and would
like
to
express your appreciation and support for all that RootsWeb has
provided
please consider becoming a RootsWeb member or sponsor. Of course if
you
are
in a position to be able to contribute a bit more I am sure Brian will
not
object <G>. It is a good way to support what is in my personal opinion
one
of the finest examples of a FREE resource on the net.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I would never make a living as a salesman, marketeer, or politician so
I'm
SURE better words could be chosen. But rather than further increasing
the
bandwidth of this list I'd like to suggest that everyone make their
own
changes and just send the message on to the subscribers (or not as
individual listowners see fit).
Hmmmm. If all of us mailed in just an extra $5 to $500
dollars...................
Hey Brian, "the check's in the mail!"
Pat Bennett