Hi everyone! I'm back with you. A little less for wear and tear but here I am. THANKS to all of you that have sent personal messages to me expressing your concern and well wishes. I truly do appreciate this group. I may be a little slow getting all the email caught up so please bear with me for a few days. (crawling up on the soap box) I hereby declare that all persons must die in alphabetical order. You are no longer allowed to die just whenever you want to, you must wait your turn in the alphabetical listing so it won't be so hard for current and future researchers to find you. The year 2002 will be designated for those with surnames starting with an "A". So as you can deduct, you will only get to die once every 26 years. If you miss the year for your letter of the alphabet, you will have to wait until it comes up again in the rotation. There will be no deviation from this order. (crawling down from soap box <grin>). I just have to tell you about this...I met one of my new neighbors that just built a house down the road. Mr. Taylor is very well connected to Chama and knows so many of the people up there. He had invited me over so that he could tell me about the people buried in the Chama cemetery. Boy, he knows who is whose kids and who married who and who their ancestors were...a veritable gold mine of information. I wish all of you could have been sitting in my pocket, this man is so interesting to listen to. As we sat in his beautiful new home visiting, he said "I have something to show you that you may be interested in." He went in the other room and came out with an extremely old ledger book. When he started to explain the entries in this ledger, you could have knocked me over with a feather!!! I was absolutely speechless (imagine that <grin>)!!! Here in my hands was the old ledger of the church in Chama, once Crestones. The first membership list was in 1883! You can't even imagine my thoughts at that time! WOW!!! Mr. Taylor has said that he would transcribe that list for me. Now we will be able to definitely place the families there. And you should see the handwriting, it's beautiful! What a treasure to have! I am so excited about this, you just can't imagine. It is so very hard to find ANYTHING on Crestones and I feel like this is a jackpot. So if any of you had families in the Chama or Crestones area and have questions, Ken said you could contact him and he will be on our mailing list now. If you wish to contact him just address Ken Taylor on our List. He has quite a bit of genealogy on the families up there, especially the Valdez family. And PLEASE thank him for sharing with us. In another day or so I am going to have a nice surprise for all of you, something you all have been waiting for, for quite some time. More on that later. >From what I understand, Taylor Hayes has been trying to get the census posted on the net so we can go ahead with the proofing, but so far she hasn't heard back from the Archivist. She will let us know when that project is ready to go. Dave suggested that I photocopy the obits, then try to scan them. That's probably the best idea so far, but right now the funds aren't available to do that so I'm still trying to learn how to scan newsprint with out it coming out all black. Some of them come out pretty decent but more often than not, it's black. Believe me, if I had the money, you all would be busy typing your little fingers off right now! And that reminds me...THANK YOU!!! I was so tickled to see all the volunteers jumping up to help out with the obits. Sometimes it just takes a little extra time to get a project going, usually due to lack of funds Are all of you wrapping up the loose ends of your winter genealogy? Do you realize Spring is just around the corner? It's pretty mind boggling to think of all the projects I want to put the finishing touches on before Spring gets here. I have some new material to do look-ups in and will let you know more about that in a day or two, when I am more equipped to handle any requests. Actually that will make 3 new things I am going to report on in the next few days so stay tuned! You know I'm not very good at keeping secrets <very big grin>. The other morning as I stood looking out the patio doors I saw a coyote right out by the back of my back yard. It was so neat. He/she just stood there for the longest time and I just watched. I still get excited about the wild life around here. It's so great to have the opportunity to observe them. I hear the coyotes all the time but I hadn't ever seen one out in the day around here. At night I lay in bed and listen to them yipping back and forth. Too bad they don't come over here and feast on gophers! I just lost another tree to the gophers! Hoping all of you are well and hanging with us! Let me hear from you! Look for another report in a couple days. Karen Mitchell 2002 has been declared "The Year of "Unity". Pass it on. [email protected] US GenWeb Project County Coordinator Huerfano County Coordinator http://www.rootsweb.com/~cohuerfa/index.htm Huerfano County List Owner [email protected] Taos County Coordinator http://www.rootsweb.com/~nmtaos/index.htm Taos County List Owner [email protected]