Hello Everyone - Just wanted to take a minute to introduce myself & wish you all the best that the New Year has to offer. My name is Margaret Whitmore & I live in Connecticut in the US. (aka Grit) For those of you who follow Raymond Kelly's County Down Web Site, you will know that last year Raymond was looking for a little assistance and he very kindly allowed me to become involved in helping with the site. To date, I have not been very involved in changing or adding to the site, but now I am preparing to do so. Raymond & I are thinking of adding a section to the site for submissions from others of their "proven" family connections with origins from County Down. The reason for using only "proven" information is to avoid putting incorrect information in a place where others might assume it is correct (like they do on the rootweb & ancestry family tree sites) There is much misinformation available, and, if all you want is something to put into your tree without worrying about accuracy, that's great. But there are many of us who much prefer to use only the information we can verify. Now, I can start with my family which my cousin & I have traced back to Ballyculter. But, if you're interested in sharing with others and maybe getting more information from our readers, we'd appreciate your input. For now, submissions need to be forwarded in the form of a gedcom file. If your information is in familytreemaker or a pedigree resource file, it is a gedcom. You can forward family trees to me at grit@raymondscountydownwebsite.com together with a simple statement of how you connected your family to County Down and what documentation you used. If you wish to submit information, but don't have your family in a gedcom file, drop me a note and we'll see what we can work out. It may take a little while to get this section up and running, but bear with me over the holidays and I'll keep you up to date on the progress. Here's hoping you will all join me in helping to keep Raymond's site right up there in the top of those trying to make genealogy information free for all to utilize. He's done a great job in keeping up for many years and it'd be great to keep things going that way. BTW - Please join me in wishing Raymond & the Lady Cathie a happy 53rd wedding anniversary! GRIT Comments and criticisms always welcome at grit@raymondscountydownwebsite.com