I am not trying to start an argument here, so please, no one take this wrong but we need to stop and think about this. Obits ARE genealogy, they are or can be a necessary part of our research. Does anyone know just in the last month, how many requests for obit have been asked for on this list alone?? I do, I looked it up...for this month alone, there have been 6 requests made for an obit lookup. Yes, anyone can get these newspaper articles by going to the newspaper and retrieving them, however, the newspaper only keeps them available for 30 days. I also have a subscription to ancestry.com, while they have many, not all newspapers keep them on-line for ancestry to have access to...I can't tell you how many time just in the last week, I have gone to view an obit only to be told that the page is not available. Dayton Daily News and The Indianapolis Star are two of the major ones that do not keep them on-line. Here on any rootsweb mailing list, they will be available forever, to anyone looking for them. We share these things on the INMONROE mailing list to have a place out on the "web" where information can be stored and easily accessed. Obits are really too important to not see posted and saved somewhere. As a volunteer transcriptionist, for the INMONROE rootsweb mailing list, I have voluntarily typed hundreds of thousands of obits, newspaper clippings about who is visiting who, who owns what, etc. (enough to put over 900 pages, in Microsoft Word, mostly one or two lines, of information on a disk for the library to sell). We have shared wills, divorce records, Funeral home record books from the late 1800 and early 1900s, mortgage records, and guardianship records, made indexes to several books that didn't have indexes, share death records, the list can go on and on. While they may not have helped anyone at the time, I can not tell you how many people have written to me (non-members of that list, but found an article with my e-mail when goggling a surname), that didn't know their family spent time in Monroe County, Indiana, or didn't know this or that about their family member, so I guess I am partial toward anyone volunteering to share information, current or past. If every one of this list's members volunteered to transcribe something, imagine the information that could be save on here, or who you could be helping? Don't have access to anything Montgomery County related...access can be gotten from any LDS center, find records that might be of interest, order the films, make copies - that $10 you used on ?? could be 100 pages of information, transcribe them and share them with the list, you never know who you will help, or how appreciated it is. Something else that hasn't been discussed or thought about...I am disabled, (which is why I volunteer for so much). I don't always feel well enough/have the strength/energy to leave my house and go and search for things, having access to it on-line makes a world of difference to me…Or those that live a half a country away. Which is why I use ancestry.com, but ancestry.com doesn't have everything. So what, I have a full mailbox for a change, or not one of the obits pertain to my husband's family...so what I have to make a few clicks to delete them, who could we be helping in the long run, who or how many could we draw to the site that might be related to someone else on this list, and solve a brick wall for them. Can the 'administrator of the list' answer how many new people to this group that we have had in the last three months? I think that the good of the membership needs to be looked at here...and if a vote is taken, I vote to keep them. Sorry, I will get off my soapbox now, just wanted to add my two-cents worth... Angel Gebhart INMONROE Volunteer Transcriptionist Findagrave.com County Keeper for Hancock County, Indiana and Photo Volunteer LDS Family Search Transcriptiionist “Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body; but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, a drink in the other, the body thoroughly used up and totally worn out and screaming ..........'WOO HOO what a ride!” mhess138@aol.com wrote: If anyone is interested in recent obits why not just go to newspaper websites.? It is getting ridiculous having to delete all this stuff that is not related to queries or genealogy. M Hess ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to MONTGOMERY_CO_OH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

I also would like to keep the obituaries. Sometimes when I am researching, a family will disappear and I have no idea where they have moved I have been fortunate a time or two when someone has posted an obit for the parents or one of the children - and wow I have a place to do more research. Other times an obituary has a child that I knew nothing about. Please keep posting - I, for one, don't mind deleting. I feel obituaries are very much part of genealogy. Joan Oeck