Good Morning List! I just wanted to remind you all to not forget to check out the St. Francois County Obituary Board while researching your family lines. A friend, Mary Taylor, and I (and others) have been working very, very hard this past month to get as many obituaries as we can online. If you haven't been there in awhile, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I believe there are now over 1000 obituaries on the St. Francois County Board. Many of these are 50-100 years old. I don't believe when you run a search of the Query Board, that it will pick up these entries on the Obituary Board. Therefore, you should bookmark the site and check it out from time to time in addition to the Query Board. Here is the link to the St. Francois County Obituary Board: http://genconnect.rootsweb.com/gc/USA/Mo/StFrancoisObits Adding obituaries to the St. Francois County Obituary Board as well as the Obituary Boards of the surrounding counties will be a continuing project of ours. I, myself, have many hundred more to add, most of which I've copied from the microfilmed newspaper records and other records at the local public libraries, as well as having accumulated many in my own personal research. I don't have most of these in any particular order. I'm just adding them randomly. If we all work together, we can make the St. Francois County Obituary Board as well as the Boards in the surrounding counties the best in the State. Please, if you have any old obituaries in your files which pertain to your family lines, we'd appreciate it if you could post them to the appropriate county Board, along with the source of the obit (name of newspaper, date, etc., if you have that information). After all, they're not doing anyone else any good stuck back in your files. Please run a search first, however, to make sure it's not already on there so there won't be any duplicates. Posting your obituaries is also an excellent way to get contacts from distant family members. Since May and I have started this project, we both have been contacted many times by people offering to share information with us. They're all excited because they think that they've finally found someone else who is interested in their family line. We've had to disappoint them by explaining that we're not a family member and we don't know anything other than what is in the posted obit. It's kind of hard for them to comprehend that we're just posting obits of strangers online for the heck of it - ha! Also, as you know, newspaper obits are not always accurate. We've tried our best to type these obits exactly as they appeared in the newspaper. If you find any obituaries we've posted that deal with your family and you know for a fact that any of the information contained in the posted obituary is incorrect, please don't e-mail us and blame us for the mistake. Please just post the correction in the form of a reply to that original post so anyone subsequently researching that name will have the correction along with the original post. Again, please check the Obituary Board out and remember to check back from time to time as we will continually be adding obits to the Board over the next few months (and hope everyone else will contribute their obits too). I never realized that there were so many dead people in St. Francois County alone until I started this project! It's just been overwhelming, and way, way too much work for two people to do alone! Washington County also has an excellent Obituary Board going. They currently have several hundred obituaries online too so don't forget to check their Board too, as well as the surrounding counties (Madison, Iron, Ste. Genevieve, Jefferson). As you all know, these ancestors had a way of getting around! Here, all in one group, are the links to the Obit Boards in the counties surrounding St. Francois County and St. Francois County. You can research and/or contribute obituary information from these links: http://genconnect.rootsweb.com/gc/USA/Mo/StFrancoisObits http://genconnect.rootsweb.com/gc/USA/Mo/WashingtonObits http://genconnect.rootsweb.com/gc/USA/Mo/JeffersonObits http://genconnect.rootsweb.com/gc/USA/Mo/IronObits http://genconnect.rootsweb.com/gc/USA/Mo/MadisonObits http://genconnect.rootsweb.com/gc/USA/Mo/SteGenevieveObits If you have information to post in several different counties in Missouri, or wish to research in several different counties, this is an excellent site to start from since you can skip around from county to county and from board to board from here. It's also an excellent site to bookmark. It's the Missouri Visitor Center at RootsWeb. You can get to "all" the Boards in "all" the counties in the State of Missouri from here. http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/indx/Mo.html Also, don't forget those Bible records, deed records, biographies, Wills, pensions, etc. If you have any of that type of information, please share it with us. We all like to "discover" information online, but it has to be put there before we can "discover" it. If you all share what information you have with everyone else, you may be surprised at the wealth of information and contacts you'll receive in return. I know I have been. I've been in contact with cousins from all over the United States as well as other countries around the World since I started this quest for my roots. I've also met many wonderful friends who have volunteered their time to help me out with my family research. It's been a wonderful and thrilling experience. I intend to post this e-mail from time to time as a reminder to new List members to check the Board. If anyone has any suggestions or comments, please contact me. Thanks! Bettye mailto:bkwofc@i1.net P.S. I've accumulated many pictures of headstones and tombstones from around St. Francois County and surrounding counties. Many dealing with my own lines as well as pictures I've taken with my digital camera for others. I was thinking about maybe starting some sort of virtual online photo album at webshots or one of the other free image hosting websites. Sort of a virtual cemetery. What do you all think of this idea? Also, if any of you have pictures in your files, if you'd like to e-mail them to me, I'd be more than happy to add them to the photo album once it's been established. Or, if there's an online website already established that I could upload these pictures to, please let me know the link. I'd really like to get all these pictures off of my harddrive and into the public view so others could benefit from them too. Another brainstorm - I have accumulated many old family pictures (as I'm sure many of you have too) which are unidentified. It just drives me crazy that I don't know who these people are. I also have many photos which are not from my family, but which I would love to reunite with the family to which they belong. A photo album of unidentified St. Francois County, Washington County, etc. photos for everyone to view would be a possible way for us to get those "fallen leaves" from our family trees identified, don't you think? > > > >