We have had several new people subscribe to this list and I want to invite them to tell us who they are researching. We have a large database of CREWS & their relatives which might help us to help you. Or maybe you can help us by giving us new data that would expand the database. We have lots of people here anxious to share with you so don't be shy! We now have 38 members although we're having a little trouble with 3 of those addresses. They don't work! I was not aware a discussion was taking place on whether mail mgrs could charge a fee to members, but I've just received the results. Good news! The lists will remain free to members although some groups such as local historical societies can charge a fee for expenses. There are a couple of other exceptions, but it doesn't affect us. RootsWeb is having to expand their capacity as the volume of traffic since Christmas is challenging their ability to handle it all. All those new computers people got for Christmas? The following is part of a note I got on what is happening: "The most obvious problem is that the Web/FTP server is maxing the T1 pipe it uses, which has forced us to limit the number of FTP connections we accept during peak hours. Users wishing to access the USGenWeb Archives should use the Search Engine server, which is on our second T1 and still has available bandwidth. (I've installed a pointer to the search engine on the "too many users" FTP message.) "The second obvious problem is that the lists.rootsweb.com server is being overloaded, and we're experiencing latencies that are beyond the 1 -10 minute level that we routinely provide. "The third problem is that we've run out of disk space for use by Marc Nozell's mailing HTML list archiver and the search engine server that supports the mail archives and USGenWeb Archives. (That is, we've filled up more than 17 gigabytes on those servers!)" It sounds like they are on top of things and will fix it as quickly as possible. I don't know if this is what is causing the problems with the new member addresses. I rather doubt it. Hopefully those people will get in touch and correct any possible mistakes in their addresses. (I sent them notes myself and they came back. Later, Pat