Why did it never occur to me that when Mrs. Batte unloaded Bolling Batte's 40,000 8" x 5" index cards on the Library of Virginia the odds were ZILCH that she would separate and keep all of his records and supporting documentation instead of just sending it on with the other stuff; i. e. the cards, etc? Duhhhh. A friend gave me this url: http://www.lva.lib.va.us/findaid/batte.htm Scroll on down to Box # 18: LVA has the R. Bolling Batte "Papers" 1918-1992, Accession # 35260. The inventory list shows box # 18 to be wall to wall with Poythress documentation, likely 5 times bigger and/or better than anything any of us now has is my speculation. And the other boxes are full of material on related families. Next questions: 1) can we have access to box # 18 and a photocopier? 2) who is going to Virginia anytime soon and has two or three days to kill running copies? 3) I will find out if we CAN access the box (if this is a problem my guess is that Craig Scott can run interference for us) and I'll make it a point to go sometime this fall with a few available days and a couple hundred bucks for the copy machine.......unless somebody wants to beat me to it which won't hurt my feelings. 4) and a trove this rich has gotta be organized and put on the site. If we can't do a Lazurus number on Al one of us will have to learn HTML talk. Comments? Is this news to you all too or have you had it all along, thought it was just the old routine 6's and 7's and I'm working myself up over nothing? Maynard P. S. Craig: assuming we can get at the box is it a doable option to find a "for hire cheap" kid who'll do it for $10 an hour and reimbursement for the copy cost? Maybe just get him to copy all the Poythress folders expecting to get a lot of duplication but it's still a bargain? Thoughts?