Well, I got quite a few positive responses to my suggestion of a collaborative project to update Gilbert Cope's 1871 "Genealogy of the Dutton Family of Pennsylvania". If this kind of project is going to succeed, it will have to proceed with some shared expectations and common understandings. It will also need to have a core of 5-6 committed participants who agree to help shape the project and do much of the grunt work involved. Here are my proposals: 1. The project must have a limited defined scope. 1A. I suggest that it include the lineal descendants of John DUTTON and Mary DARLINGTON, the PA immigrants of 1682, not their ancestry (or supposed ancestry) in Cheshire England. This is similar to what Cope did in his book. For each of the first 4 generations, ancestry of DUTTON spouses can be included back to the original emigrant to North America. This is a lot of folks potentially. The number of lineal descendents in Cope is: 2nd generation - 5 3rd generation - 26 4th generation - 48 5th generation - 91 6th generation - 243 7th generation - 508 8th generation - 335 (children in 1870 when Cope published) Our goal would be to fill out the 8th generation (maybe as many as 1,250 altogether using a 2.5 multiplier for each generation) 9th generation would amount to about 3,100 10th generation would amount to 7,800 (this would include those of us born in the 1940s and 1950s 11th generation would be on the order of 20,000 Of course, Cope missed some members of earlier generations (such as my g-grandfather Frank DUTTON in the 7th generation) that would expand the tree laterally as well. So we are talking potentially about 40,00-50,000 new names! That is no small task. Cope only dealt with 1,259! 1B. As a corollary, DUTTONS for whom there is no known connection to the tree of John and Mary's descendents should NOT be included. The descendents of Massachusetts cousins or of other, later, immigrants should NOT be included. We can't have lots of disconnected branches with no place to put them. Until a submitter can legitimately match them up with a known individual in the master file, they do not get added. 2. The project must have some standards to make sure things mesh right. 2A. Technically, all data should be in Family Tree Maker or GEDCOM files. Those files can be imported into a master file and be connected up with the persons already listed in the master file. This should NOT be a project to do data entry for someone who has some scraps of information or some word processed family tree. The project would be an attempt to integrate information that others have already prepared. 2B. Citations of sources should be included in all submissions. FTM and other software has capability to provide a citation for each event - birth, death, marriage, burial, etc. It is amazing how much "personally told to me by my grandmother" material is wrong. The result of the project should not be to propagate guesses, but to present well-researched and documented relationships. 2C. We should use Cope's material as the basic starting point and reference. If someone has information that contradicts Cope's work, he/she needs to reference the page and text of Cope that is affected. If material is submitted that provides for 8th, 9th, and 10th generation descendents of an individual in Cope, that individual's number in Cope's book should be specifically identified. 3. We need to have shared but reasonable timetables for any work. I am not retired; I have a full time job, a 13 year old son, a wife, some farm animals. I do a lot of community volunteer work and also travel out of the country quite a bit. I do genealogy as a hobby and only when it fits into my otherwise busy life. I suppose most of us are in that situation. If someone submits some DUTTON material, it could take weeks or even months to get added. Depending on how much help we get from how many people, the project could easily take 1-2 years to come to fruition. ----- Given these suggestions do I now have volunteers to become part of a team to do this? If so, let me know WHAT you can do: check sources, merge data files, proof existing data for inconsistencies, typos, do original research? My plan would be for the group to do its work by email and to set up a group mailing list that we could use for mutual communication. We could use this DUTTON-L list as a means of updating everyone on our project's status and requesting information from other DUTTON researchers. I'm interested in negative reactions and criticisms too! So pipe up and give us all your thoughts by posting here to the full list, not just to me personally. Doug Hall Chichester NH