you are so right, and when you talk to them, have a tape recorder, I know I forget a lot of things so I record a lot of conversations when I am talking to whats left of my relatives, then I can go back and put it in some kind of order - I think the county lists are for the county and the area, it you just want a name, then get on just the name list, me I am on so many I just like to talk about anything - i will give my telephone number if you want it, but then I can call you for free so if you want to talk, send me your # off list ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alice Campbell" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 3:33 AM Subject: Re: [ALJEFFER] Message from the list administrator |I joined the ALJeffer list for the specific purpose of finding out about | the community, the people who lived there, their occupations, all so | that I could place my ancestors into their proper place in their | community. | | For those 'nouveau genealogists' who only want a list of names, dates, | parents, & offspring, perhaps this purpose does not serve them so well. | But a real genealogist IS looking for just those little things that will | tie his family and their neighbors together into a recognizable whole. | | So I, for one, encourage the sort of banter that we've been having and | wish there were more of it. Every little bit of knowledge we have | brings us that nearer whatever genealogical goal we have. | | For those who are just collecting data to fill the blanks and don't want | to know about the people they are collecting, well there is the delete | key to use. Lord knows, I use it on lots of surname queries for people | that I have no info on. It should work both ways. I don't mind that at | all, because I might have known the surname. You other guys ought not | to mind deleting posts on local history that you aren't interested in | reading. | | Keep up the nostalgia!!!! We are genealogists and because of it we are | historians too. Lots of us are old enough that we need to dump our | memories NOW onto the younger ones so the information in them will not | be lost. I spent 2 weeks last month in Birmingham with my last | remaining 84 year old aunt asking all the questions I had about her | parents (my grandparents), her siblings, her friends, where they lived, | how they lived, who certain people were, all that sort of thing. We had | a grand time, laughed a lot, got lots done, but I still left with a | bunch of questions unasked and left for the next visit, which I | anticipated would be Christmas. Unfortunately she fell & broke her hip | the day I left, and didn't survive the surgery. I am sitting here so | glad to have asked all those little things, and realizing that I will | just have to find the other information somewhere else. Whatever you | know - pass it along. When you die, leave a will stating what should be | done with your records and files, making sure the valuable information | you have collected is not lost again. Write things now, don't put them | off. Etc... Don't really want to turn this into a lecture, but I think | you get the point. | | Alice | | ------------------------------- | To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message |