Howdy... Likely you will remember I wrote a bit ago about FITHIAN. Well, I have come a long way since then, and was given a document to update that has (unfortunately) had some of its value stripped from it. It was a collation of information in 1838 by Enoch FITHIAN. Some of his descendants wound up in Burlington County. Many went elsewhere, but generally a lot of them are to be found in New Jersey cemeteries. The document was copied. Then it was copied again, sadly, with some of the dates "corrected" by an H. W. FITHIAN. I say sadly, because it ruins the efforts of Enoch to some degree that is not ascertainable! If they had footnoted the corrections, life would be merrier, as far as this document is concerned. Later a CUTRER descendant copied and corrected some of the grammar, but found things still in need of improvement (I suspect the part that was in bad shape was the result of addenda by H.W.F.). In this state, I got it. There was no use kidding myself into thinking I could restore it. So what I did was correct typos, misplaced paragraphs, corrected the totally obvious errors (such as two women getting married and having such and such children), etc. It is at least pretty smooth now, except where material seemed likely to be of the original, which I did not wish to tamper with. The punctuational methods in such paragraphs I largely did not employ, that were used elsewhere, so there is a slight inconsistency in that respect. It was given me by Ms. Barbara Reeves Manwaring OPPLIGER, a direct FITHIAN descendant, to offer to the internet. Now I have asked her to proofread it, but I believe she is going to basically read it and say it is OK. So I am ready to privately release it to researchers now, if anyone wants a copy, though I will offer it to sites, after the proofreading. Let me know if you would like a copy. It is a DOC file, so you will need appropriate software to read it. Later, I will tackle the job of making a TXT version, if necessary. The second reason I am writing is that I decided to start a free maillist forum where persons can offer genealogical researching ideas to get the most out of websearches, document searches, etc. Just ideas are exchanged, and there is no commercial involvement of any kind, etc. If you would care to sign up for it (I get no advantage, except your sharing your ideas with me, and you only get the advantage of sharing the ideas of the others and me), send a blank email to: mindgem-subscribe@listbot.com You then can post to: mindgem@listbot.com You can unsubscribe by: mindgem-unsubscribe.com Vince Summers