This list has been far too quiet lately, so I thought maybe I ought to wake you all up & get you ready to do some genealogy! :-) It seems a bit odd that the list has fallen so silent, since we've actually gained several new members again in recent history. Now our numbers have approximately *quadrupled* since the beginning of December, so it's definitely worthwhile to post your ancestor information or questions to the list. Plenty of people here to answer your queries now...How about we finish that "Roll Call" that we started recently? Only a few of us posted... I also wanted to let you all know about some new stuff that we have. I should be posting the newest queries this weekend, and hopefully another cemetery or three. But besides that, I'm going to make an announcement for free lookups to be done by those of us who are involved in History Savers. We have a pretty good assortment of marriage indexes, census indexes for a couple of states, and fairly broad range of miscellaneous books that cover ancestors in several states. Although some of these resources don't have anything directly to do with Wasco County, our ancestors all came here from somewhere else, so I thought maybe you guys would like to have the first shot at some lookups. I'll list in a separate email what we know so far that we have, and I'll add a few things to that list sometime next week at the History Savers' site (use the link for "genealogy helpers"). Please limit yourselves to 3 lookup requests at a time, so we can keep up with the influx of requests. Last, but certainly not least, I wanted to give you a heads-up on a publication soon to happen, which may very well contain information about some of your families. Furthermore, if you have something to contribute to it, now is the time. Albert Belanger is putting together a wonderful resource that will give information about all known pioneers who came over the Oregon Trail in 1851. That just happens to be the year that my family came over. You may not be aware that many of the families that settled in Wasco County in the late 1850s and through the 60s actually arrived in a much earlier year but had to settle in one of the communities near the coast, because lands weren't yet opened up in Wasco County. The government did not offer any lands in Wasco County until the late 50s because Wasco Co. wasn't adequately protected yet from Indian attack, and the 50s were some of the worst years for that problem. Therefore, the only pioneers who lived in Wasco Co as early as 1851 were either government agents, enterprising fur traders, or "squatters" who would have to wait to gain title to any land they might be squatting upon. Watch for the next email... -- Cheri puny@mail.com --->>>^<<<--- Wasco Co., OR GenWeb site--> http://www.historysavers.com/orwasco/