Folks, Behind the scenes, members of the USGenWeb Project on every level, state, county and local, have been involved in a massive project. While my work and that of other County Coordinators has been virtually transparent, it has involved a great deal of effort you may not have noticed. This has been necessitated due to a corporate policy change by The Genealogy Network, owner of RootsWeb. They have freely housed our sites for a dozen years and have been responsible for the rapid growth of the genealogical pursuits we all enjoy. The acquisition of RootsWeb by The Genealogy Network, corporate owner of Ancestry.com and others genealogical entities, is a step designed to reflect their responsibility to their stockholders. Obviously, RootsWeb provides no tangible profit to their bottom line. Their decision to make RootsWeb a closer affiliate of their genealogical family was a logical corporate decision. You may also note that the Rootsweb URL you are accustomed to seeing now has the Ancestry.com name consolidated within it. The implications go beyond just an address change and the addition of an Ancestry.com banner at the top of each page hosted by RootsWeb. The changes recently made by the USGenWeb Project to seek other hosting arrangements were necessitated by the need affect independent control of the USGenWeb Project. To assuage the concerns of each individual state and local Project member and to ensure the concept of free genealogy, this major hosting change was made in accordance with the USGenWeb Project bylaws, as stated in Article II (http://www.usgenweb.org/volunteers/bylaws.shtml). This could only be accomplished by separating ourselves from our commercial benefactor and making provisions for independent control. This is not to say that any RootsWeb pages were under any direct threat of being compromised or taken over by a commercial entity. The opportunities that TGN has provided during the last decade for free server space has been a boon to all of us and their sponsorship has been appreciated by all page hosts and users. Ultimately, the USGenWeb Project will continue to act in behalf of all those who have come to rely on this organization for the ultimate source of free genealogical resources. - The USGenWeb Project home page can now be found at: http://www.usgenweb.org/ - The NCGenWeb Project, following the lead of our national organization, can now be found at: http://www.ncgenweb.us/ - Along with that move, the USGenWeb Archives are now housed at: http://www.usgwarchives.org/ - The NCGenWeb Archives can be found at: http://usgwarchives.org/nc/ncfiles.htm The pages that I maintain have also been moved as follows: - Catawba has moved to http://www.ncgenweb.us/catawba/ - Burke has moved to http://www.ncgenweb.usncburke/ - Lincoln has moved to http://www.ncgenweb.us/clincoln/ - Gaston has moved to http://www.ncgenweb.us/gaston/ - Cleveland has moved to http://www.ncgenweb.us/cleveland/ - City of Conover has moved to http://www.ncgenweb.us/conover/ Please change your bookmarks accordingly. Individual links will continue to bear the same page address (i.e. xxx.htm). I voluntarily maintain over 10,000 genealogical web pages. The majority of these have required revisions to reflect the new servers. I have also added corrections, additions and scripts to make them as helpful as possible. I solicit the help of all page users in reporting bad links, missing images and non-functioning applications. Nothing is too insignificant. At the same time, I am anxious to receive any new resources that users might be willing to share. Any and all suggestions are also solicited. Thanks also to those who have come to rely on the USGenWeb Project for their "one-stop" genealogical experience. Derick S. Hartshorn Proud member of the USGenWeb Project