Hello again to the list, As we all begin another chapter (I don't want to call it a new chapter) in the life of Erie County Genealogy, I want to publicly give a big thank you to Mike Wennin for having the interest back in August 2000 to see that the Erie County Genealogy web site needed some new energy and for working closely with Nate Zipfel, our state coordinator, to get the site turned over to him. Since Mike took over the site about the first of September 2000, I certainly believe that he gave the spark that was needed to light the fire under many of us. I also want to thank Mike for having faith in me back in December to ask me to help him out, despite the fact that I knew nothing about HTML or web pages, and for recognizing the work that I have done on his behalf since then. I also want to thank Jeff LaMarca for establishing the site in the first place and for building some of the site structure still used today. I accept my new role as County Coordinator for Erie County Genealogy with just about the same goals as Mike has expressed in his home page welcome letters - to continue to revitalize internet genealogy research for Erie County (PA). This will continue to be a team effort. As I have stated in the past, my Erie County roots are modern and as such I do not do research myself in Erie County, although I do live here. There are many parts of the county with which I am not familiar, and I must rely on input from others for answers to many questions. I can, and will, however, take any meaningful material sent to me and post it to the web site so that others doing research can benefit from it. Between Mike and myself, we have solicited help from some of you to be township coordinators. Several townships still need a person to be listed as a coordinator for those townships. I will shortly be announcing coordinators for Springfield Township and Greenfield Township. Although ideally a township coordinator is a person who has lived all their life in the township, has excellent PC skills, knows web page design, has access to unlimited township resources, has roots going back to the 1700s in the county, and can answer every genealogy question about every family that ever lived in the township, we all know that is a pipe dream! Although I will elaborate in a separate message later, a township coordinator is simply someone willing to have their name and e-mail address listed, who only has to know a little about the township, but who can "spread the wealth" so to speak and lift some of the burden from my task as county coordinator. I will "pull it all together" but continue to need a team. Many thanks also to all of those who are on the team already, not just as township coordinators, but as "data submitters". Over the next several weeks, Mike will be transitioning over to me those parts of the site where he has had continued control since I began helping him. You will initially not see any drastic changes to the web site as I believe Mike has established a good structure. I will be making some minor cosmetic changes, similar to those I have been making since December. I look forward to all of you continuing to provide all the bits and pieces of Erie County genealogy that you have laying around (collecting dust ?), and I look forward to producing new and enhanced web pages to help everyone with their research. Bill Klauk County Coordinator, Erie County (PA) Genealogy web site, a USGenWeb/PAGenWeb project http://www.rootsweb.com/~paerie Millcreek Township, Erie County, PA