Dear Cousins, There is no doubt about it, I have shirked my responsibilities to our New England heritage. However, I have found a very neat couple of sites which may make up for some of my neglect. The first is a general index of History and Genealogy e-texts found at Rootsweb. Thank goodness for Rootsweb. They are just wonderful, AND, our Most Generous Hosts of the List and website. http://www.usroots.com/~lovitt/books.htm Savage's NE Dictionary . USE Savage with care, but it is a great finding aid: http://www.usgennet.org/usa/vt/state/savage/ Next, Blackwell's New England Books Project http://www.usigs.org/library/books/ma/books.html Mea Culpa! Instead of putting up the pages I should be loading onto the website, I have been prowling the Maryland online Archives to verify some of my theories. A huge number of the Virginia Backcountry (Frontier) settlers came from Maryland. Their patterns are fascinating. Early research (Maryland settlement began in the 1630's) is complicated because of the writing and spelling. One must remember too that these people had accents almost impossible even for their English compatriots to understand. Dialects still abound throughout England, and if you ever watch the irrepressible Hyacinth Bucket ("Pronounced Boo-Kay!") of the BBC's "Keeping Up Appearances" on PPS you can appreciate the challenges researchers face in in attempting to decipher 17th century Maryland records. But the rewards are there if one persists. I have (temporarily) ignored New England for another reason: it is much more straightforward research than the Mid-Atlantic region. Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia all claimed the Backcountry areas where (present-day) West Virginia and Ohio come together with Northern Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. This was a vast, mountainous area with boundaries stretching (in theory) to the Pacific. In trying to unravel the genealogical mysteries that hang in the mountain timber shadowed valleys, I am once again impressed by how much computers and internet can change the nature of our quests and answer questions that have gone unanswered by previous genealogists and historians over the past hundred years. Some of the problems are these: 1. people have not yet learned to use the new technologies in the best ways. 2. results of research are not yet transcribed in the best, most accessible and understandable manner, 3. technology has not yet provided genealogy software to record results and analysis 4. Old methodologies are not being emulated by new "Tekkie" searchers 5. New methodology such as search engines makes it hard to check for multiple spelling variants 6. Transcriptions made by machines are often inaccurate (just like the old human transcriptions!) I am working within my own research to overcome some of these problems. Naturally, I suggest that the best solutions I have come up with are being reflected on the website through the research format of Locality, History and Kinship = Identity. American Crossroads has existed for less than two years. In that time, I believe I have found the keys to unlock several Pennington Identities and have unraveled an almost impossible Smith ancestry. In turn, in Maryland, I have researched upwards of 100 other Surnames, then followed them along the Frontier of Civilization as it kept moving west. In addressing the new workings of research and scholarship, one must also cope with ideas as simple as the implications of "new-age" terminology. History is no longer simple history. It now embraces Geography and Anthropology with pieces of each interlocked with the other. Cultural Anthropology is similar to Ecological Geography. I had one anthropology professor (her specific sphere was a Chinese community in Indonesia) tell me I could not research American "clans" because I would not be able to prove the female side. She had no knowledge of such research, but insisted I was wrong in proclaiming I already had, to a great degree in my Smith-Watts-Markham family of Virginia. Proper genealogy research is the interlocking piece, and now, with computers I believe we will make our own Great Leap Forward at the Crossroads! And I will heartily thumb my nose at that professor! -- along with a Surname Association whose middle name is Research! You can do the same! Just let me know how to guide you in more understandable ways. That's what we're trying to do here. Don't misinterpret my comments. When I say e-Lists don't work well for transmitting family information I simply mean they don't work well for huge amounts. E-mail DOES work well when you transmit it individually to persons who are interested via attachments. Or put it on the website! Or put it in our new magazine/newsletter we're going to start together! I am not a Dictator! Your ideas are HUGELY welcome! Love, Your Cousin, Carolyn Carolyn McDaniel cmacdee@teleport.com ========================================= --- Visit American Crossroads --- http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~amxroads