Hi everyone, I am the coordinator for the BOWER-L, BOWERS-L, and BAUER-L discussion lists. It was through a glitch at Rootsweb that I just found out about owning the BAUER-L [hence, the message that came out on the list two days ago re: who's the admin] and my luck to pick up BOWERS-L. Okay everyone, here's what I'd like to do -- Bauer and Bower are both root names for 81+ variant spellings, and both names are used interchangeably so much in legal documents that we all sometimes have a hard time trying to find our ancestors. The BOWER list has 294 cousins in its family; the BAUER list has 60; and the BOWERS list has 83. Some of you are subscribed to all three lists for fear of missing something. I certainly understand that! A lot of you are already in the family fold on the BOWER list. I'd like to merge all three lists together into the BOWER-L. The reasons for this is: 1.) The BOWER-L is much larger and has more traffic. Your opportunity for finding an inline cousin and/or ancestral data is greater. 2.) The traffic on the the BOWERS and BAUER lists is very small. However, the traffic on the BOWER list is just a little bit heavier, though not enough to strain anyone as far as loads of email goes. The only time this may be a problem is when we have a roll call, but then the traffic slows down considerably after a week. 3.) If I keep the lists separated, I'll spend much of my day cross-posting messages to make sure everyone gets the material. It's easier to set you all up on one list. If you are not already a member of the BOWER-L, will you please send a subscribe message to <BOWER-L-request@rootsweb.com> or, for the digest at <BOWER-D-request@rootsweb.com>. It will make merging much easier. If you have any questions, please send them directly to me at <ladyaudris@earthlink.net>. Thanks for your understanding. Colleen Pustola ladyaudris@earthlink.net