Hi members! We need to extend a real warm hug for our own Ilene Fortune. She has taken over working on the St. Mary's marriages so I could be freed up to do another project. THANK YOU SO MUCH Ilene!!! I just loaded the 1883-84-85 marriages and a 1889 railroad map of Huerfano County. Go take a look at them and let Ilene and I know what you think. Ilene tells me she's a little bogged down for the next couple days but will be back at it real soon. I really do appreciate our volunteers so very much. Without your help only a part of the data would be online. Later tonight Taylor is going to try to send me the census to put online on our Huerfano site so that all of you can start proofing it. She said she would be assigning pages to everyone. We are sure excited about getting that project done so we can get it "officially" online. Taylor has really hung in there to get this census done and all we need to do now is get it proofed before we open it to the public. THANK YOU Taylor!!! Okay, now I am going to tell you about another one of your little surprises that I have for you. When I was at the Pueblo Library one day I asked the librarian to tell me everything they had for Huerfano County. She said it wasn't much, besides the microfilmed papers, and not many of those roles of film. She said that in one of the notebooks there was a list of resources for the County. I wasn't very enthused when I only found a couple of pages...but one thing really caught my eye. The entry said "Naturalizations". Well I thought it would be a story about the people that came from other parts of the world. WRONG. This is a list that gives the name, Country, and date of naturalization or petition. I asked her to retrieve it for me and I copied it. I was so excited to find this!!! So for the past few days I have been inputting the data into a database to put online. I have recognized so many of the names that our researchers are looking for, Snedden, Shaw, Essress, Patterson, Topping, etc. And some of them I have to wonder about...is this the original spelling of that... Well you understand what I'm trying to say. I think the earliest record was 1873 and it goes up through the 20's. I'm barely on 1914 now so you can see this is going to take awhile. But I am so excited about it. Up till now, we didn't have a thing on Naturalizations. There are no names or indication of who did this little work of art but boy, I could kiss their whole face for doing it! <very big grin> I can hardly wait to get it online for all of you! It also includes the minor's petitions which is really great because you get a list of the minor's from the family. I have to do more research on this to really get an understanding of the processes for each entry. If anyone wants to jump in here and give me a quick brush up course on the process, please do! It's been at least a 100 years since I had to deal with Naturalizations. <grin> So now you know why I haven't gotten back to the obits project, between proofing for Ilene and working on this database, and working on the cemetery photos, I'm keeping pretty busy. Let me hear from you! Oh yes, HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL OF YOU! I have no sweetheart so all of you have to stand in for one! XOXOXOX Hugs to all, Karen P.S. 2002 has been declared the year of "Unity".