Hi, Folks, This question about what is east Texas has come up before, and I do not like the idea of making a list of counties that "qualify" because my sense is that "East Texas" is in a real sense a state of mind. I can understand that someone searching for ancestors in Texas would want to have some idea of what area a mailing list covers. We've had quite a few responses, and while all of them have some value, I really don't want to get pinned down and give people the impression that there is any right or wrong. For instance, there is an "East Texas" web site, which comes out of Tyler, that shows a map of East Texas and it does NOT include Nacogdoches. Give me a BREAK! Back in the early days, the Nacogdoches (yeah, the extra "a" in there is wrong, and I wrote and asked to have it corrected, but it has not been) district covered all or part of 29 counties, and extended all the way up through Dallas and down to Harrisville (Houston). East Texas Roots started out with Nacogdoches as the center and included all of the surrounding and nearby counties. At the time, there was NO mailing list that really dealt with this area. There is a mailing list for the counties up on the border of OK, though we have queries for them, too. As someone mentioned, there is the Hill Country list, and there is a West Texas list. East-Texas doesn't extend into the panhandle, or down into the valley. Austin and San Antonio are too far afield. What we are trying to do is provide a place where people can gather to discuss the area and their ancestors who lived in what has been "historically" East Texas. So it is less a set of current counties, than it is a geographical-cultural area from OK to the gulf and extending about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way from the LA border (which fluctuated some in the early days) into Texas. I *do* consider Houston, for instance, to be part of East Texas, at least in some sense. Most of the queries and discussions involve the counties surrounding Nacogdoches: Shelby, San Augustine, Sabine, Panola, Angelina, Cherokee, Houston, Rusk and the counties surrounding them. But that doesn't mean that queries about some other area in the eastern quadrant are inappropriate, just that they probably will not get as much response. Now that each county has its own mailing list, East Texas Roots has changed somewhat in character. As someone pointed out, if your ancestors wandered all around the Eastern part of Texas and different parts of your family lived in different counties, it is a lot more trouble to belong to a bunch of different lists, and many people choose to stay on ETR instead or in addition to a handful of primary counties. So, again, East-Texas-Roots is not for the Hill Country, the panhandle, South Texas (Corpus Christi, etc.), the Valley, but does encompass the counties bordering and surrounding Nacogdoches-Shelby-San Augustine, and the area that used to be the Nacogdoches District. Sincerely, Pam Phillips Listowner, East-Texas-Roots-L Email: webpsalms@iname.com