Hi, I'm working on a family-friend's genealogy, and am interested in advice on how to proceed. The family name is Hickok, and I have gotten back to one George A. Hickok, who, according to 1910 Missouri census info, was born in Illinois circa 1868. It seems to me that the next step is to try to locate George A.'s family in the 1870 census for Illinois. The problem is that I have no idea where in Illinois this family might have lived, circa 1870, and that there appears to be no soundex for the 1870 census, so I'm kind of stumped on how to continue. Thank you in advance for any advice/help. John Maineville, Ohio, USA P.S. I posted this message twice over the past 2 days to soc.genealogy.methods, but the message never posted. My posts to other newsgroups go up OK, but not at soc.genealogy.methods. Can anyone explain why this is happening? (All my "view"/display options are set to display all posts, including my own...) This has me stumped!

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 21:19:09 -0500, John <[email protected]> wrote: > I posted this message twice over the past 2 days to soc.genealogy.methods, > but the message never posted. My posts to other newsgroups go up OK, but > not at soc.genealogy.methods. Can anyone explain why this is happening? soc.genealogy.methods is a moderated newsgroup. This means that a volunteer moderator must inspect the post, make a judgement call that it's on-topic, and then forward it for distribution before it's seen. It's a double-edged sword. It improves the content of the group because only on-topic posts are allowed through, but it also means that patience is required. I like moderated groups in some contexts, this one included. There are some people who have a grudge against the moderator who will of course object loudly to this sort of thing, but that only serves to emphasize why moderation helps keep the noise level down. Anyway, that's the reason behind the delay. The good news is, that there are folks reading that group who have given up other newsgroups due to the level of "noise" posts in some unmoderated groups, from certain individuals who will inevitably make themselves known. Dave Hinz

Hi Dave, Thank you very much for the info concerning moderated newsgroups. I've been posting to newsgroups for several years now, but those newsgroups have been few in number, and all evidently have been unmoderated, so I've never been exposed to the concept of "moderated" newsgroups. Now that you've explained it to me, my gut reaction is that moderated newsgroups are good. There's one newsgroup that I recently subscribed to, and I just couldn't believe how much off-topic nonsense (mostly along the lines of "make lots of money REAL quickly"-- squirrelly stuff, to say the least) got on. "Isn't anyone in charge here?," I wondered. Anyhow, now that I know, Dave, I will just sit back and see what happens to my post--it's pretty on-topic (I think) and have NOTHING to do with making lots of money in unbelievably short periods of time... Thanks again, John