Greetings, Several new folks joined Degruy-L today and we'd like to give you a warm welcome. We have only been a functioning list for about 11 days, so we are quite new and hope that you will bear with us as we take our "baby steps." You can "catch up" rather quickly by reading through the digests which have accumulated to date. We hope you will introduce yourself and tell us where you live and who you are researching. Our first "welcome letter" follows. Glad to have you on board..... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Welcome to the new Rootsweb Degruy Mailing List! It is my hope that this will be a true collaborative project. I know it's dreaming "big," but I think it would be wonderful if we could work together to produce a Degruy database as complete and as error free as possible. Another "big dream" would be to be able, as a result of this list, to submit something on the DeGruy family to New Orleans Genesis; something along the lines of what Irna Centanni and others have done for such families as the Hotards and St. Amands. At the very least, it will be wonderful to have a group of folks that we can consult with whenever we find ourselves against a genealogical brick wall or when the research road has led us into yet another blind alley. Let me make some practical suggestions for navigating this list.: Make your subject headings as specific as possible When responding to a particular entry, try not to copy all the entries that appear in the "issue" [if you're using the digest form]. Delete the rest and just include the item specific to your response. Very important: do not put personal information on the web. Respond off-line if you want to give your mailing address or your phone number or a web site you do not want available to the general public. We should protect each other's privacy as well as our own. It might be nice to baptize this list by having each of us send a message to the list in which we introduce ourselves; describe the areas in which we are currently working or folks we are currently searching. If you'd like to say what city you are located in or how long you've been doing family history, that might help us to get to know you. I also hope to make an announcement in LAORLEAN so that others will know that we exist and can join us if they are interested. Feel free to share this information with friends or fellow researchers who might find it helpful. That's all for this entry. Another will follow soon. I look forward to meeting you in cyberspace! Renee Hotard List administrator degruylist@earthlink.net